Kaduna begins registration of cemeteries

The Kaduna State Geographic Information Services (KADGIS) said it has commenced registration of cemeteries across the 23 local government areas of the state as part of the ongoing land registration exercise. The Director General of KADGIS, Ibrahim Husseini, made the disclosure at the Global Surveyors Day lecture organised by the Northern Surveyors Forum (NSF) in […]

The Kaduna State Geographic Information Services (KADGIS) said it has commenced registration of cemeteries across the 23 local government areas of the state as part of the ongoing land registration exercise.

The Director General of KADGIS, Ibrahim Husseini, made the disclosure at the Global Surveyors Day lecture organised by the Northern Surveyors Forum (NSF) in collaboration with KADGIS.

Explaining the reason for the registration of, Husseini said, “We discovered that most of the cemeteries in the state are not well kept and are very dirty, so the governor felt we should register all of them since we have a law that provides that the local government councils are the custodians of cemeteries.

“These cemeteries are not protected as a result of which some people no longer want to bury their dead there because  corpses can be exhumed and graves vandalised. So, what government is doing is to revive the old laws, modify them, register all the cemeteries and hand them over to the local government councils. With this, the councils can make budgetary allocation to employ people that will manage the cemeteries appropriately,” he explained.

Commenting on the ongoing land registration exercise in the state, Husseini said they had completed registration in Kaduna North where over 20,000 properties were registered. 

“We are now 50 per cent into registration in Kaduna South, we have also commenced in Zaria and Sabon Gari and we hope to move to Kafanchan in the next two months and to other local government areas of the state,”

While speaking on the theme of the Global Surveyors Day ‘Land and Poverty’, he said Kaduna state government had since recognized the need to empower its citizens by using land as a veritable wealth creation mechanism. 

In pursuance of this objectives, he noted that the state government had subsidized the fees required for processing and obtaining Certificates of Occupancy to as low as N5,000 under the Systematic Property Registration Programme (SPRP).

This, he said, was to enable low income earners and vulnerable groups to easily obtain titles for their land and properties that can be used to obtain loans via collaterization. 

According to him, 80 percent of the estimated three million in the state are not covered with statutory rights of occupancy.