Lagos upgrades land registry, plans new database

In an apparent bid to overcome obstacles limiting housing provision, Lagos State Government has announced plans to upgrade its Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) to a comprehensive land administration and automation platform.

Under the new system backed with Geographical Information System (eGIS) promoted through a partnership with Thomson Reuters, all property records will be stored in an integrated database and can be viewed as geographic data and maps.

The Special Adviser to the Governor on Urban Development, Mrs. Yetunde Onabule, who disclosed this at the commissioning of the State’s upgraded and redesigned Land Registry, said the groundwork of the project has commenced with all files, documents, information relating to each file being collated for scanning.

“It implies that outstanding service delivery will be offered to applicants as every record would have been digitized and stored down to the root of title, thereby making searches and other transaction processing much quicker as well as discouraging fraud,” she said.

The notices like buyers beware, Mrs. Onabule said, will be irrelevant because the current status of every property can be easily verified from the land registry, thereby deepening the issuance and reissuance of bankable modern and secured titles within days to property owners as well as support online property search for individuals, banks, insurance firms, lawyers and agencies.

The essence, she explained, is that applicants now have the option of conducting a search anytime and from anywhere in the world using the internet, which will ultimately support online administrations for transactions with attachable supporting documents for the first and subsequent land transactions like statutory Right of Occupancy and Certification of Occupancy.

Mrs. Onabule said, the governor has also authorised a comprehensive system, which would ensure inclusiveness, transparency, accountability with the aim of achieving 100 per cent efficiency and improving the ease of doing business within the Lands Bureau and Lagos State.

“With these reforms, we have implemented a structure and framework within the Lands Bureau, commencing with the Land registry, which ensures overall performance, eliminates poor service delivery, opaque official procedures and unnecessary time delays”, she noted.

The Special adviser further noted that the new layout of the land registry was redesigned in line with improved workflow processes and the positioning of resources relative to one another.

According to her, the Bureau has implemented a centralised service desk, which will provide real time status update on enquiries and transactions as well as fully implementing the Registration of Titles Law 2015 in conjunction with the Ministry of Justice, which also mitigates government’s risk and exposure to litigation arising from lapses within the Lands Bureau.

“We are confident that the improvements within the Land Registry and the Bureau in land administration and management, will lead to better access to formal credit, higher land values, higher investment and income in land which would all crystallize into wealth creation for both Lagos State and its esteemed citizens/residents as well as making the Bureau becoming the highest revenue generation agency in Lagos State”, she noted.

For Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, the whole essence of these reforms is to deploy cutting edge technology to drive efficiency in land registry, administration and management system to enhance the ease of doing business in Lagos State.

According to him, as the population continues to increase, the need to upgrade existing systems and introduce new ideas that will and ensure availability of land for various competing needs becomes expedient.

He stressed that the state has introduced the new land administration to ease the process of transactions on land and related matters, which will create a one –stop- shop, where the office of the State Surveyor General, Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development and the Lands Bureau are located within the same complex.