Since the creation of earth by God, land has been a scarce and essential factor of production because anything human beings have to do depends largely on it. Land is the solid part of the earth’s surface and its natural resources. Land is also an important factor of production, which every other factor depends upon and human activities take place.

The land tenure system is the basis on which land ownership is given to individuals, families, communities and corporation legal entities and also determines control and usage rights enjoyed by the bodies. There are various forms of land tenure systems namely, freehold ownership, inheritance ownership, State Land, communal ownership and leasehold ownership. The communal land system is a system that appoints the head of the community such as Obas or traditional rulers as the governing power of the entire land jointly belonging to the community. 
  
The Land Use Act (6) of 1978 was promulgated by the former Head of State General Olusegun Obansajo’s regime on March 29, 1978 and was made part of the Nigerian Constitution and became an Act. The Land Use Act (LUA) has a provision that vests ownership of Nigeria Land in the State / Public sector under the State Governor.  The Act to vest all comprised in the territory of each State (except land vested in the Federal Government or its Agencies) solely in the Governor of the State, who would hold such land in trust for the people and would henceforth be responsible for allocation of land in all urban areas to an individual resident in the State.
  
The main purpose of the LUA was to energise economic development in Nigeria by ensuring effective and equitable utilisation of land resources. The LUA has abolished the existing land tenure systems and replaced them with a uniform land administration system across Nigeria. The Act has failed to establish a uniform land tenure system that governs ownership in Nigeria, which makes it difficult for banks to validate claims on land and landowners to use their land to create wealth or to secure collateral.
   
The LUA Section 2 empowers the governor to control and manage land within an urban area only, while the local government is empowered to administer land outside a designated urban area. It went further that the management and control of all land in the territory of the federation is vested in the governor of the state who is expected to hold the land in Trust for the use and common benefit of the citizens.
  
 Hence, the states have control over the ownership, use, development, and administration of the land. Since the enactment of the Act, every state in Nigeria has been using it in the management and control of all land in their territory and established Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to be in charge of land administration in each State of the federation.
  
In Lagos State, the land administration is under the Governor’s Office, Lands Bureau which comprises five departments namely: Land Use Allocation Committee, Land Services Department, Land Registry, Land Regularisation, Human Resources Department, and Account Department, and other seven units are responsible for the administration of lands services in the State. 
   
However, the Governor’s Consent is a process whereby the holder of a Certificate of Occupancy over land or any other title decides to sell or alienate the land to another person. In other words, the Governor’s Consent is when the governor has the right to grant consent to any transaction which it thinks has not contravened any of the land. If such a Governor’s Consent has been obtained fraudulently, the governor is entitled to revoke such consent immediately. 
  
Therefore, in every subsequent transaction on the land that has been issued a Certificate of Occupancy, such transaction cannot be perfected until the Governor’s Consent is obtained. According to the Land Use Act, Section 21 and 22 prohibits the alienation of a Certificate of Occupancy by the occupier of land by assignment, mortgage, transfer of possession, sublease or otherwise either wholly or partially. These sections simply provide for the modus operandi of alienation of interests of title to land. In other words, before any title or interest in land can be conveyed to another, such conveyance must be done with the consent of the governor, otherwise called Governor’s Consent.
 
Some property transactions require the governor’s consent. These include the following: assignment, mortgage, sublease, lease, and gift. The procedure for obtaining Governor’s Consent in Lagos State is cumbersome, bureaucratic and poses a big challenge up till today. Former Lagos State Governor, Sen. Bola Tinubu now President, launched the process of obtaining the Governor’s Consent within 30 days. It worked for some time then, but the reality is that today it could extend for as long as one to two years. Hence, applicants end up spending more than expected to be spent on the processing of the Governor’s Consent.
   
The process of Governor’s Consent is faced with some challenges such as under-staffing, incessant power outage, and outrageous assessment fees. Under-staffing is one the major challenges facing processing of Governor’s Consent and other assignment, the Land Officers available are inadequate to undertake or assign for processing of various applications submitted to Lands Bureau when compared with the huge works available to be processed. The officers are also assigned other works such as rectification, mortgage, enumeration of properties, assessment and compensation during roads construction and delivery of Right of Ways (ROT). This work schedules are huge when compared with staff strength available in the Lands Bureau.
  
The Lands Bureau depends mostly on electricity which is supplied majorly from Ikeja Electric Distribution Company (IKEDC), which is epileptic coupled with the crazy bills being paid by State Government. That made the state to opt for the Independent Power Plant (IPP)which is currently being used as source of power supply and cheaper than power supply by IKEDC.

Now, they have regular supply of electricity and the challenge has been drastically reduced, and their works are faster. The revenue drive of the State Government led to high rate of assessment fee to meet their allocated target. This is a challenge to the public when they are requested to pay assessment fee, which is usually high and mandatory; they have to pay in order to perfect their Title documents.
  
A major challenge during processing of Governor’s Consent is the administrative bottle neck, which deals with the movement of files from one officer to another, Lands Bureau to Surveyor’s General Office to Lands Services and to Attorney General Office. This movement of files causes a lot of delay from one officer to another and it requires monitoring with file numbers and date.
  
At times some files may be queried, or commented upon by officers and such files may be sent as Keep In View (KIV) if there is no response from the applicants. These made the management of Lands Bureau to come up with the On-line Processing or E-Governor’s Consent Processing.
   
Consequently, the Land Bureau Management in the earlier part of the year 2020-2021 introduced Aumentum an Electronic Processing of Governor’s Consent and wanted to jettison manual processing that had been in use for over a decade. Presently, the Bureau is transmitting from manual to an electronic processing. This has made the procedure more cumbersome and tedious, which causes more delays in the transactions.

This has affected so many prospective applicants /clients who want to process their title documentations, which lack access to credit because the properties could serve as collateral, whereby many financial institutions are unwilling to extend credits to landowners. The government does not use the land to its advantage because it does not know the value of its landholdings. They can sell or lease some of their titled land to generate income and raise funds in the capital market or to finance capital projects.  
   
The procedure of obtaining the Governor’s Consent in the Lands Bureau of Lagos State includes application letter, registration of applications, charting of application at the Surveyor-General Office and after successful charting of survey plan, application returned to land services for the calculation and issuance of letter of assessment to be paid by the applicant. Submission of receipts of payment for further processing of applications, approval of Governor’s Consent by Attorney General, deeds for stamp duty and registration and collection of governor’s consent / deeds of assignment.
  
These processes are applied to both the manual and on-line applications. However, the process of the manual is faster than the on-line process because it does not require Internet connectivity and network problems.

The on-line process, which is being adopted by the management of Lands Bureau is causing more problems whereby every application step requires internet connections and applications cannot move from one stage to another. 

Another problem of the on-line process is the uploading of title documents from the Land Registry of various applications for the Governor’s Consent, mortgage, lease, sub-lease, rectification and gift.

Currently, the management of Lands Bureau is adopting Aumentum as the modern and reliable Electronic / on-line process of fast-tracking the process of Governor’s Consent because they believe it will remove all human bureaucracy which causes a lot of delay and reduce the level of human interface in the processes.

For me, the manual processing should not be jettisoned for now, both should be undertaken pare-par-sue with the Aumentun because of internet failure and connectivity which result in delay in files processing. They still need to do more by investing in internet connectivity to provide seamless networking and improved internet connections on their platforms.

They (government) have to invest more on reliable power supply such as Solar Energy and inverter as an alternative power supply sources because On-line processes need constant electric power supply to avoid interruption of ongoing processes of applications on computer systems.
  
If the management adopts the above suggestions, it will reduce drastically bureaucracy in processing Governor’s Consent and will increase the internally generated revenue of the Lands Bureau and Lagos State.  Apart from improving revenue, it also will increase the rate of approval of Governor’s Consent to applicants.
Owokade is a retired director,research, statistics and evaluation, Lagos State Urban Renewal Agency.