Nigerians to get electronic CofO in 24 hours

The Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, has said digitisation of the federal lands registry will help to increase the value of lands, stating that Nigerians can now get land title documents in 24 hours.

Speaking at the unveiling ceremony of business process automation of certificates of occupancy for federal lands at the ministry headquarters on Friday, the minister said the automation was to improve efficiency in the registration and capture of all landed property.

He said the generation of highly secure certification of occupancy documents will be printed by the Nigerian security printing and minting to eliminate forgery adding that interested applicants can begin the process via https://lands.worksandhousing.gov.ng/.

“This is to make life better. the process that used to take three months will now take about 24 hours. As head of the ministry, I will stop carrying loads of documents every weekend with the new innovation,” Fashola started.

The minister who recalled how he met land title applications dated 1992 upon resumption, stressed that the new process is part of the government’s commitment to reduce poverty and influence prosperity.

He said, “Some of the things I wanted to share are the arrears of C of O that I had the opportunity to process when the president finally delegated the authority to the ministry. some of the documents date back to 1992. so somebody has been waiting for years to get a C of O and it will interest you that I signed about 6,685 of them during my tenure.

“It may look invisible but this is a step towards prosperity. This is another layer of technology deployment and I urge you to embrace it and keep it going long after we have left.”

The minister further urged staff of the ministry to embrace the new change and work judiciously for the benefit of Nigerians as “old habits never die”.

In his remarks, the acting permanent secretary of the ministry, Folorunsho Esan, said it will also allow the easy collection and update of ground rent and other fees, and allow lesser turnaround times for processing all land and property applications leading to increased confidence in the general public.

He said,”The Ministry has successfully integrated with TSA-Remita and FIRS platforms for seamless payment of land charges and stamp duty respectively. Also, the current C.of.O document has been revised to make it less cumbersome and in conformity with acceptable global standards.”

Speaking also, the director of lands and housing development, Felix Appah, said the digitalisation of land titles is borne out of the commitment to transcend analogue processes in line with global best practices.

“Embracing this new development of automation process of issuing C of O will reduce the time frame from an average of 90 days using the manual method to a 24-hour period (1 day). This turnaround time will positively boost Nigeria’s ranking on the ease of doing business,” he said.