The move by the Enugu State government to raise revenues and revolutionise land administration is becoming burdensome on residents, landlords and investors, while the state government smiles to the bank, LAWRENCE NJOKU reports.

Ezenwa Ogubuike, a retired civil servant, recently returned to his residence at Akwuke in Enugu South Local Council, Enugu State, to find a red mark on his gate with the bold inscription, “Not Paid, By ENGIS.”

At first, Ogubuike did not understand the message until inquiries revealed that it was placed by officials of the state government.

Having not paid any levy to the government since erecting the building, and given that the area has not enjoyed any government presence, he wondered why anyone could make such a demand.

A few days later, Ogubuike visited the Enugu State Geographic Information System (ENGIS) office and was informed that the government had begun revalidating property in the area.

The revalidation required property owners to present their documents after paying a non-refundable processing fee of N100,000 for privately acquired land. At the conclusion of the process, the property is authenticated and updated to conform to government land administration standards.

Among other things, ENGIS is tasked with transforming land administration and spatial data management, revolutionising how individuals, investors, and the government interact with land and property information – ensuring accuracy, security, and transparency across all real estate transactions.

Ogubuike said he was also expected to cough up “over N5m” to undertake the recertification process. To meet the recertification demand, however, he increased the rent for the four flats occupied by tenants by over 100 per cent.

This automatically increased the rent of a building he set up six years ago from N400,000 to N800,000 per annum, even though there is no visible public infrastructure to attract people to the area.

In the same area, owners of undeveloped plots of land were required to undergo similar processes to retain their property, as they were expected to present their documents alongside non-refundable fees to ENGIS and to pay the infrastructure levy to enable the government to fix the area. This is the situation that landlords in Olympic Layout, One Day Area, Merry Land Extension, Ugwuabor, Jamboree, and several other developing areas of the state face.

While some were asked to recertify their property, others underwent regularisation and paid the infrastructure levy to the state government. While the state government continues to demand charges it said were part of state law, the burden is passed on to tenants by landlords through house/shop rents, which now threaten to erode the incomes of average earners in the state.

Writing under the aegis of the Olympic Layout Landlords Association, the landlords last year decried ENGIS’s demand for infrastructure development.

According to them, “Part of the levy cost as much as N 10,000 per square meter of land in some areas”, adding that the least a landowner was required to pay in the areas was N5 million for a standard plot of land measuring 500 square meters.

They stated that the majority of landowners are retired civil servants who bought the land from indigenes of the Attakwu and Akwuke communities with their savings while still in active service, adding that upon retirement, some used their gratuity to build houses on the plots, while others could not.

They further recalled that around 2020, many of the landowners discovered that parts of the layout had been the subject of a long drawn legal battle between Akwuke community, Enugu South Local Council and Etiti village, Ngwo in Enugu North Local Council, adding that the victory obtained by the Etiti Community forced many landowners to pay millions of naira to them to avoid the reallocation of their plots, destruction of their buildings or total loss of their houses.

“It is therefore against this backdrop that landowners in the layout rejoiced when Enugu State, through ENGIS, announced the takeover of all land in the layout as part of “Crown Land” and directed the landowners to pay a N100,000 verification fee, which was quickly compiled with within the specified time by many of them.

“However, the joy turned to sorrow and anxiety with the imposition by ENGIS of an infrastructure levy on the already impoverished landowners, who are expected to pay the levy within six months or have their plots, including the buildings on them, allocated to willing buyers.

“As it is now, many landowners in the layout are not only in a state of dejection, pain and sorrow but live in apprehension of what will happen next, following ENGIS ultimatum to them to pay at least N5 million or risk losing their plots and houses.

“These dejected citizens who toiled for years to buy land and build houses in the layout are therefore appealing to Governor Peter Ndubisi Mba to intervene in his magnanimity and reduce the infrastructure levy to N2000 per square metre of land, payable within one year to enable them to pay the levy and avoid losing their lifetime investment and dying out of shock that will result from such experience,” the letter stated.

One thing that Governor Peter Mbah did upon assuming office in 2023 was to review and increase charges payable for landed property, in what he described as “right pricing and appropriate value for land in the state.”  The development did not just affect the cost of purchasing land; it also affected construction, as well as rent for residential apartments.

Apart from the government’s actions, which many blame for soaring house rents in the state, the activities of those who go by the name “Ogbonechagu,” deployed in every part of the state by various communities for the purpose of generating revenues from land or property developers, are also to blame.

Ogbonechagu are basically made up of bare-chested young men who wander around community lands imposing and collecting levies on property being developed in the area. Not parting with an agreed fee is as good as not developing the property at all, as they would employ all within their reach to frustrate the project. Their fees range from community to community.

In communities with leadership crises, property developers are made to pay each of the groups if they must continue to work on the property.

Piqued by public outcry on the implications of the development, the government recently called a town hall meeting with a view to ascertaining what was best for the people of the state.

Attendees at the meeting that was held at the Dome section of the International Conference Centre (ICC) spoke glowingly of how the people wanted such an interface to solve a growing problem militating against development in the state.

Complaints at the forum ranged from insincerity on the part of the government to forceful revocations, illegal reassignment of land, indiscriminate, multiple charges, and double sale of property by some communities. They lamented the level of corruption and impunity in land administration in the state, pointing to the existence of two or three Certificates of Occupancy (C of O) on one property at the same time, among others.

The state government, however, stated that it was the spate of ugly reports concerning land in the state that gave rise to the meeting, as well as the establishment of the ENGIS to regularise land administration.

The Secretary to the State Government, Prof. Chidiebere Onyia, told the murmuring attendees that the Mbah-led government remained committed to building a transparent, efficient, and investor-friendly land administration system anchored on legality, digitisation, and accountability.

He announced sweeping reforms in the sector, including the immediate abolition of illegal levies and the streamlining of land-related charges, as part of the broader economic transformation agenda.

Onyia disclosed that ground rent, land use charge, and all property-related charges have now been unified and reduced by over 60 per cent, with property owners required to pay only a single Unified Land Use Charge annually through the Enugu State Internal Revenue Service (EIRS), whether their properties are located within estates or outside them.

“These reforms are anchored on transparency, predictability, digitisation of records, and strict adherence to statutory processes for land allocation, registration, and development control,” he said, adding that effective land governance must be driven by continuous engagement with communities, professionals, investors, traditional institutions, and citizens.

He announced the immediate ban on the controversial Ogbonechagu fees collected by some communities and local councils and directed their outright abolition.

He added that a task force had been constituted to enforce compliance, while members of the public who are compelled to pay such illegal charges have been urged to submit evidence to [email protected] for prompt intervention.

He further revealed that the reforms were informed by the recommendations of a multi-stakeholder Committee on Land-Related Revenue and Administration constituted by the Governor to address complaints of multiple taxation and revenue abuse in the state.

Governor Mbah, it would be recalled, had signed an executive order declaring nine of the state’s seventeen local councils as urban areas to enable planning and structured infrastructural development.

The Managing Director of ENGIS, Chiwetalu Nwatu, also announced that all buildings located in housing estates owned by the Ministry of Housing and the Housing Development Corporation must henceforth obtain building approval directly from the ministry and the corporation, irrespective of their locations.

He added that building approval for houses in non-government estates within the Enugu municipal area would now be processed exclusively by the Enugu Capital Territory Development Authority (ECTDA) to eliminate jurisdictional overlaps and administrative delays, while certificates of occupancy for all buildings in both private and government estates would be processed directly for individual property owners, thereby strengthening security of titles and improving asset bankability.

An estate valuer, Donald Igwe, who praised the idea behind the land reforms, however, expressed doubt that it would reduce the high rents residents face in the state at the moment.

Igwe stated that to control spiralling rents, the government must begin to invest in low-cost housing, undertake infrastructure development in new layouts, and be willing to allocate its estates to private individuals at reduced prices to develop.

“The government missed it the moment it started thinking that Enugu’s oil wealth is its land. This was the governor’s first mistake. This brought about a huge cost on land. The resultant effect was a spike in rents and investments. It is, however, not too late to correct this error to control land and housing pricing in the state”, he said.

Also speaking, a soil scientist, Dr Sunday Amalu, attributed the success of the reforms to the development of mass low-income houses, stressing that, as much as land possesses revenue potential, ordinary people should not be denied access to it.

“The ordinary people should have the opportunity to own land, so that when they cannot cope with the competition in the city, they can go to the remote places and set up facilities and operate from there. It becomes a crisis when they cannot cope in the cities and remote places. So, I think the government should not place much premium on land to deny certain residents”, he said.

The university lecturer and consultant at Dawnin Consult also called for a further reduction in government charges for land documentation and building approvals, saying that doing so would help address the housing crisis in the state.

“We have a situation where those who bought land before this administration cannot build because of the charges. We also have those who are willing to buy but cannot raise the exorbitant fees charged for land. So, in order to keep the state free from the commotion, I suggest the government undertake further reviews. For whatever it may be, the state will gain from the development,” he said.