Nasarawa to generate N5bn from land transactions

The revenue forecast of N5 billion, which was done by Siraj Consulting Engineers, the contractors handling the habitat project, is expected to be streamed into the public purse from three revenue components of the totality of the NAGIS project: Property Registration; Lands Fees and Charges; and Property Allocation, according to Sonny Agassi, state commissioner of […]

The revenue forecast of N5 billion, which was done by Siraj Consulting Engineers, the contractors handling the habitat project, is expected to be streamed into the public purse from three revenue components of the totality of the NAGIS project: Property Registration; Lands Fees and Charges; and Property Allocation, according to Sonny Agassi, state commissioner of Lands and Urban Development.
Background
NAGIS is a 21st Century urbanization project which output is expected to provide the roadmap that will lead the current administration to give Nasarawa the same planned development as its big neighbour, Abuja. It was awarded at the cost of N2.7 billion.
Siraj took up the job which is part of the administration’s overall land reforms, to provide the Digital Aerial Mapping (DAM) of the state, Geographic Information System (GIS), as well as provide an effective cadastral districts planning in Karu, Keffi and Lafia – in what is expected to bring development control and address the growth of slums in the state. The entire project aims to provide for physical planning and development control of the land use in the designated areas.
The multi-faceted project which execution has clocked the two-year period, is executed by the consortium of: GIS Transport, handling GIS; Aeroprecisa Limited, handling DAM; and a team of Nigeria’s leading town planners: Pragmatic Solutions Consult Nigeria, Envicons, and National Environmental Design Associates, handle the planning component. A&K Construction Limited, is the civil engineering partner in the project, and has provided the NAGIS complex in Mararaba, with the headquarters coming up in Lafia, the state capital.
NAGIS was first awarded to JM Technologies, a firm contracted by the previous government of Aliyu Akwe Doma. The firm had the about N500 million job to provide DAM, but almost two years later, the present government inherited only a muddled up NAGIS section in Lafia, and a generator as well as a Toyota Hilux van at a time much of the contract money was already released. There was nothing on ground to justify the expenditure on a project initiated for habitat development. The present administration unbundled the project, and re-packaged it in the Siraj contract which has included two more components.
Deliveries of two years:
NAGIS is one of Governor Umaru Tanko Al-Makura’s milestones. The project has now uplifted Nasarawa from an agrarian state to a sophisticated one and as a model for others states, including Abuja, the FCT to copy.
In two years, all of Nasarawa – a total land size of 27,300 square kilometers has come into aerial images called Orthophotos, a feat that has far surpassed the implementation of GIS by the FCT administration called AGIS. The project’s Mararaba complex commissioning in 2013, attracted Nasir el-Rufai, the former FCT minister who pioneered GIS in the country. el-Rufai confirmed that NAGIS beats AGIS by far because AGIS lacks DAM. The FCT administration, several years after the project was executed in 2003, is yet to have the flying component, compelling AGIS to rely on Google images, or satellite images to provide the foundation for their GIS.
This is just as the 2013 Global Geospatial Conference, Africa’s largest and regularly occurring GIS event, attracted participation from NAGIS to showcase its GIS programme. Also, the Surveyor General of the Federation, Nigeria (SGOF), Professor Peter Nwilo and members of the Surveyors Council of Nigeria (SUCON) have long ranked Nasarawa top among the 36 states and the FCT in the implementation of lands reforms to conform with world best practices.
Within the period, the project introduced a new certification, with lands titling now conforming to international best practices. It now takes applicants the period of 14 weeks only, to be presented with Certificates of Occupancy (CsofO), at against the previous practice where it took property owners and their progenies a lifetime to get the certificate. Many applicants, who acquired their properties as far back as the days of the old Plateau State, were presented with their certificates during the execution of NAGIS, in what saw the event witnessing a stream of tears from the joyous applicants, most of them heirs since their parents had long passed on.
This is just as every beat of information on lands in the state is now in digital files, and can be obtained with just a push on the computer button, a system which has eliminated loss or hiding of files by civil servants in the state.     

 A new approach to revenue:
The opportunities of economic growth remained locked away from the fifth generation state, over 17 years after creation, until the initiation of NAGIS by the present administration. A state sharing the longest border with Abuja, Nasarawa has what a state needs to develop a dependable revenue base, and to look away from the federally generated oil revenue. But this gold mine was yet unexplored, untapped, until the execution of NAGIS, which has changed the narrative in Internally Generated Revenue (IGR).
IGR from the state has been poor over the years, making annual budget performance poor too. For example, of the N16.3 billion IGR forecast for 2013, the state could only yield N4.1 billion from the IGR base, which includes Pay As You Earn (PAYE). But of this amount, the revenue raked in from lands related charges within the same period was N448,020,842.68, representing about 25 percent of the total earnings of that year in IGR. The entire budget performance of the same year showed that N59,046,807,565.49 only was realized out of the N110,146,672,672.00 budget estimate.  This represents 53.61 percent.
Yet, the about 25 percent budgetary contribution from lands, to the 2013 IGR represented only part of one of the three components of revenue haul from NAGIS; which is Lands Fees and Charges.

Revenue projection:
The state Ministry of Lands and Urban Development is targeting a big cash haul from three NAGIS revenue components of Property Registration; Lands Fees and Charges; and Property Allocation, by the time the project clocks the next 24 months from last August.
The project suffered some setbacks arising from delays in contract payment as well as the wave of bloody hostilities that hit the state between 2012 when NAGIS was awarded, and much of 2013 and 2014 when the execution continued and completed. Payments trickled in minuscule as expected from a less endowed state; and coupled with the loss of confidence in doing business with Nasarawa State, much of what was expected from applicants of titles could not pour in. This is just as it was no possible to send a field team on ground to do property registration, the first component of the revenue projection, at a time parts of the state was displaced because of the wave of killings. The project, therefore, did not meet the target in goldmine.
“But there are no compromises in terms of deliveries on the NAGIS job. The quality has not been compromised. The governor did not rest in making sure the partners delivered quality,” Agassi, a Nigerian-Canadian supervising the project told Daily Trust.
He said from property registration alone, the sum of N100 million was projected at the 24th month of the project. Although, this component was never implemented because of the drawbacks, the project partners including the ministry are using the projection as a recess button pressed to hit the road in target of N100 million monthly from the last August.
Agassi said the ministry has procured field vehicles and has assembled the field workers on the team to commence the registration, using GPS equipment to capture the square meters of every property on ground in Karu and Lafia, and title all the properties as they are, for the purpose of generating the revenue. The team will be armed with maps and Orthophotos generated from after Aeroprecisa Limited flew over the landscape of Nasarawa with light aircrafts to capture every beat of what is on ground on the land size of 27,300 square kilometers.
The second component: Lands Fees and Charges is the only one implemented so far, to 100 percent. Here, the state has hit N1.1 billion in collection, from the target set by the project partners at the 24th month of the commencement of NAGIS. Siraj projected N1.5 billion, according to documents shown by Agassi, who also disclosed that what has been generated is over and above the projection.
“Right now, over 1000 Rights of Occupancy (RsofO) are yet to be collected by applicants, after they were generated.” He said this component has been accomplished, and is stable.
The third component, which is Property Allocation, is also expected to come, although he was not specific about the time. He said the administration plans to acquire lands for new layouts, and develop them with infrastructure, to allocate plots for prospective buyers, from where an ambitious revenue is being targeted.