Ogun Land Bureau assures HomeOwners’ Charter Scheme applicants of title documents, plans to generate N42b.
The Ogun State Government has assured applicants who sought land title documents under the HomeOwners’ Charter scheme that their applications would be considered in the future, as more applications are currently being considered under the recently launched Land Administration and Revenue Management System (OLARMS).
This comes as the Bureau plans to generate more than N42.807 billion in the coming fiscal year.
Mr. Aina Salami, Special Adviser and Director-General, Bureau of Lands and Survey, offered the promise while defending the Bureau’s budget estimate in Oke-Mosan, Abeokuta, before members of the State House of Assembly.
Salami explained that OLARMS was a digital platform developed by the current administration to alleviate administrative bottlenecks encountered by applicants in the process of registering property and obtaining government permits, and that the government has established a single registry for all land-related transactions.
Positing that the government remained continuum, Salami stressed that over 3,000 title documents had been issued to property owners under the Homeowner’s Scheme, while the release of another batch of over 2,000 is underway.
He promised that the OLARMS platform was designed with user interface to effectively restructure registration, inspection, payment of assessment fees and seamless issuance of Certificate of Occupancy (C of O) for all categories of structures.
Salami defended the Bureau’s budget request for next year, informing lawmakers that the Bureau suggested a total spending of N955.4m, of which N425.8m was for capital projects and the rest N529.6m was for recurrent expenditure.
The Special Adviser stated that the over N42bn expected revenue will come from Certificate of Occupancy/ratification fees, plot allocation/layout fees, and rent on government land, among other things.
In response, the lawmakers tasked the Bureau in their individual speeches to secure the immediate distribution of pending title documents under the homeowners’ charter to applicants within a record period.
In a related event, the State Commissioner for Housing, Jagunmolu Omoniyi, provided a total budget of N3.288 billion for the creation and actualization of the State’s housing needs.
Giving a breakdown, the Commissioner stated that N88.02m would be used for recurrent expenses, N3.199bn would be used for various capital projects, and N3bn would be expected as revenue for the next fiscal year.
The budget plans of the Ministries of Community Development and Cooperatives, Physical Planning and Urban Development, and the State Housing Corporation, among others, were also discussed by the parliamentarians.
