The Edo Government has said that only 30,000 Certificate of Occupancy (CofOs) were issued by it in 50 years, which includes the period of Midwest State, Bendel State and the present Edo.
The Managing Director, Edo State Geographic Information
Service (EDOGIS) Mr Frank Evbuomwan, stated this in Benin, said the issued C of
Os covered only five per cent of the properties in the state,adding that EDOGIS
was poised to change this.
He said that the agency, which became fully operational in
2018, had so far issued no fewer than 1,200 C of Os, with a target to issue
10,000 in 2020 alone.
According to him: “With less than seven
weeks after making payment, you are sure to have your C of O. “It comes at a
reduced amount, a quarter of the several hundreds of Naira spent on the same
certificate before now, depending on the size of the property.
“We have digitalised the manual process of land administration in the state; EDOGIS has ensured efficiency and effectiveness in land administration in the state.
”So far, we have issued about 1200 C of Os, bearing in mind that we started about a year ago. “Unlike the features that characterised the former certificates, especially with the ability to easily fake it, this new one comes with a lot of features such that it will be extremely impossible to be faked.
“It comes with a water marked features that you can barely see. There is also a machine readable encode, among other features,” he said. The EDOGIS boss said that the agency, which is set up as a quasi-private sector driven government agency, had carried out the aerial survey of all the urban centres of the state.
He added that the aerial survey would be extended to the
rural areas. “What this means is that we now have a graphical representation of
what properties look like in the state, we are now tying that to the owners.
“Our aim is to eliminate the grey areas to properties ownership in the state in
the next few months,” he said. (NAN)