Abia vows to recover illegally acquired government lands

Following latest policies on lands and housing matters, the Abia State government has vowed to recover the state government’s lands and property that were illegally acquired or possessed, promising to also comply with all due processes of acquiring land from their owners, including communities.
  
The Commissioner for Lands and Housing, Chaka Chukwumerije, who explained some of the policies, said that due process, including timely payment of compensations to owners of lands or property acquired in the public interest, would be followed.
  
The commissioner noted that the government had already demonstrated this when it acquired the land for Abia Innovation Park and demolished structures to pave the way for the expansion of the Umuahia to Ossah road into six lanes. 
  
Chukwumerije asserted that the 30-day period for processing and issuing of land Certificate of Occupancy (C of O) is being implemented. He stated that the policy would impact positively on ease of doing business in the state while removing touting and middlemen that hitherto delayed it.
 
 On the introduced recertification of title documents of lands and houses for which the government imposed N50,000 fee, the Commissioner said that the resulting authentic documents would add value to the land and property.
  
While stressing that the recertification exercise would help deal with previous anomalies in land allocation and acquisition in the state, Chukwumerije further explained that the periodic exercise is under the Alex Otti administration’s mantra of sustaining the maintenance of transparent lands and property records. According to him, the exercise will also address the situation where people with allocation letters cannot access their allocated lands for development.