I uncovered massive fraud in Benue lands ministry – Commissioner

Tell us your experience as the Benue State Commissioner for  Lands and Survey thus far?It’s been challenging as a commissioner because when I was appointed, my age was an issue. I was 34 at the time and some skeptics didn’t want to give me a chance. Many a time in the course of discharging my […]

Tell us your experience as the Benue State Commissioner for  Lands and Survey thus far?
It’s been challenging as a commissioner because when I was appointed, my age was an issue. I was 34 at the time and some skeptics didn’t want to give me a chance. Many a time in the course of discharging my duties, rather than people seeing me as a professional, they looked at my age.
It was challenging because expectations were high; I was appointed a commissioner into a ministry that is in my field. Thus I had the burden to deliver, else critics would say even professionals couldn’t do the job.
Also, the ministry of lands is a sensitive ministry because almost everyone has something to do with land.  Another challenge is people’s unwillingness to accept change — people who have got used to doing things in a particular fashion even though it’s not working, wouldn’t want to accept new ways.

So what is your performance thus far?
As a surveyor appointed into this ministry, I have done well. When I came in, I looked at the situation on ground and looked at the law, particularly the Land Use Act of 1978 which is critical to my ministry. The Land Use Act came because government was finding it difficult to carry out developmental projects because of resistance from citizens who owned land. So government had to take total control of land through the Act so it can carry out development projects unhindered.
Even though government would take the land, it still compensates those who customarily own the land. When I resumed office, I realized that in Benue State especially in Makurdi and other urban areas, we had issues of disjointed development. In some areas, people walked up to two or three kilometres before they can access their homes; they couldn’t drive in because people had built indiscriminately even on streets.
So, for us to have an orderly development, planning was critical. What I saw on ground was that development was far ahead of planning. So I felt for us to stop this haphazard development, we had to do a comprehensive plan of our urban areas. In the course of ensuring that we move planning ahead of development, people who were involved in illegal land transactions felt their illegal business had been tampered with and became antagonistic. There was this practice where people just go to the locals to acquire land, on the pretext they wanted to build schools, hospitals or some other social services. They usually would get the land very cheap and without Certificate of Occupancy (CofO). They would in turn parcel this land and sell at huge costs to other members of the public. So when we began planning, these sorts of persons were affected and they became hostile.

Let’s talk more on your PPP arrangement. Could you give details on how this can help people get CofO faster?
When the As-Built Survey project is complete, you don’t need to beg government for CofO. It will be automatically generated once your area is planned. You only need to pay the necessary charges to get it. Under the circumstance, for residential development, we’re charging N30,000 for recertification but this applies to those who already had title on their land and need to be reissued. But if you never had a title, you will pay the professional charge which is N150 per square metre. Once you pay the necessary charges, your certificate is ready in three weeks. With the As-Built Survey, you have all the spatial information about every parcel of land and this makes it easy to get CofO. Now we’re encouraging people to come up quickly before some impostors come and take over their land especially in cases where the land is in dispute.
The PPP arrangement is for 12 months period only and we hope to achieve our aim in 12 months.

How much are you contributing to government revenue? How much was the balance sheet of the ministry before you came and how much is it now?
I have done a lot to generate revenue for the state. First, when I came in, I discovered that people would do business with the ministry, pay for it and the payment wouldn’t be documented. I checked the books and saw that four years before my appointment, the government didn’t realise up to N10 million from the ministry.
I realised the massive fraud in the system and I immediately asked that all payments to the ministry of land and survey be paid directly into the ministry’s account in the bank. We banned all banks from stationing their representatives in the ministry because even the representatives were not lodging the money in the ministry accounts. I had to stop the conspiracy. We even discovered a Youth Corps involved in this fraud. There’s significant improvement in our revenue generation but I don’t have the figures right now.

Some citizens of the state have accused you of land grabbing.
Change is a very difficult thing for people to understand. Once you decide to do the right thing, those benefiting from the old system would resort to blackmail just to distract you. Once you get discouraged and yield, they’ve achieved their selfish purpose. But I’m determined and not discouraged by blackmail so long as what I’m doing is right, I remain focused.
When people say I have grabbed land and given some to my friends and associates, where is the evidence? In the first allocation that I did, 98 percent of people that I allocated land to, I didn’t know them. They got land based on application. They accused me of giving land to my friends; as a commissioner, if you know me, it’s a privilege and if you genuinely apply for land, should I deny you land because you know me?
Ironically, on a daily basis my friends accuse me that though I have been a commissioner for four years, I didn’t give them land. I don’t consider politics in land allocation because my appointment is to serve the public, not political interests. Whatever political party you belong to, I will treat you fairly. I give land to those who apply for land.
Recently, my wife even accused me of not giving her land as a commissioner. The records are there; she doesn’t have. If people have documents about my illegal land deals, let them bring them forth. In the course of doing the right thing, some people who were benefiting from a corrupt system and found their interests threatened, would naturally cry foul.
However, those who are genuinely interested in the state are commending our reforms. As a commissioner for lands, I have worked in the bush physically for one year. In the whole of 2013, I was involved in field assessment.

The Benue Geographical Information Service project was started by your predecessor, why is it hanging on a balance?
Yes! My predecessor started the BGIS but it wasn’t feasible as it were. There’re two components to managing land administration. The way you set up a GIS for land administration is different from the way you would set up a GIS in managing patients in a hospital. In land information, all the components must be articulated. The first component is the procurement of hardware and software. The second aspect is the spatial information (the coordinates of the parcels of land). You then marry the spatial information and the attribute information — the name of the person, the file, the address and every other information of the applicant before you can have a comprehensive land information system.
What happened was that the software and the hardware were being put in place but the spatial information was lacking. So on each parcel of land, you must have the spatial and attribute information. With this you can search the land anytime using the spatial information or attribute information and you get the owner of the land easily. So, the other components were put in place without the spatial information. That would make the system not work.  
The person that was here wasn’t a surveyor so he honestly didn’t know that a lot of properties in Benue weren’t surveyed. The cadastral map was supposed to be scanned and digitized. The GIS hasn’t been abandoned; we only need to get the other aspects that were missing incorporated. We’re now generating the spatial information to marry with the soft and hardwares so the GIS will work.