Revocation of Abuja land titles
NEVER in the 26 years since the enactment of the Land Use Act has there been an application of its provisions on a scale as drastic as that being carried out by the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Malam Nasir el-Rufai. Recently, he announced the revocation of all certificates of occupancy ever issued since the creation of the Federal Capital in 1976 and the commencement of the Land Use Act two years later. The announcement affects tens of thousands of allottees who are already in possession of the certificates. New certificates are to be issued, upon fulfilment of certain conditions.
To buttress the seriousness of the directive, Malam el-Rufai has been beating his chest in various interviews about the irreversibility of the policy. He has also been among the first to queue up for the issuance of the new certificate of occupancy for his two plots in the capital territory. We think that the minister should tread more cautiously. The revocation of the Cs-of-O is coming on the heels of the demolition of many high-profile as well as lowly structures that were deemed to have contravened the Abuja Masterplan. There is no respite yet from the demolition squad, and suddenly, all land owners have been told that the evidence of their title is now worthless unless revalidated by the FCT Minister.
The revocation is backgrounded by an administrative audit in the FCT, which revealed fraudulent transactions in land. The audit also shows that a number of the Cs-of-O purportedly issued by the FCT Minister at any time in the past are fake. It is primarily to redress this anomaly that the incumbent FCT Minister has taken the unprecedented step of annulling all certificates of occupancy issued by his predecessors. As controversial as the Land Use Act is, the commonest instances of the exercise of the power of revocation of a certificate of occupancy relate to compulsory acquisition of the land covered by such certificates. And by the provisions of the Land Use Act, such revocation must be governed by the public interest, a test on which the courts are hardly ever lenient.
As desirable as el-Rufai's motives may be, his approach is definitely problematic. It is an arrogant posturing to assume that all Cs-of-O issued by his predecessors are defective. Some, or many, may be. But definitely not all. This is one give-away indication that the audit of certificates carried out by the FCT authorities was not thorough enough. The impression they have created is that they took the simple way out by declaring all certificates bogus and then challenging their owners to come forward for revalidation. This approach is lazy and has the potential of imposing hardship on land owners. It should be fairly obvious that not all holders of Cs-of-O are resident in Abuja.
They may be Nigerians living in different parts of the world, where they have also lodged the certificates for safe custody. While it is true that any reasonable land owner would defend his interest in the land, an administrative fiat requiring him to travel from wherever to process a supposedly cleaner and purer version of his C-of-O is an unnecessary expense with its attendant risk of travel. With so much insecurity in the postal system, that mode of transmitting the C-of-O would also be unhelpful in the circumstance.
Besides, certificates of occupancy have become valuable documents in processing and securing credit transactions. Again, it is fairly obvious that some Abuja land owners may have deposited their Cs-of-O with some financial institutions as security for loans. Until such debts are liquidated, the certificates are not released. This being a customary practice among financial institutions, it is hard to contemplate how those in custody of the Cs-of-O for secured credit would release them without the conditions for the credit having been fully discharged.
No less worrisome are some of the conditions for revalidating the Cs-of-O. According to the FCT Minister, for a new certificate to be issued, the allottee must show evidence of payment of all charges and levies relating to the land. In addition, where structures have been erected upon the land, there must be no violation of the territory's planning laws. It is in the latter case that the wrong-headedness of the revocation policy is more manifest. A certificate of occupancy and violation of town planning laws are not the same. In fact, you require a C-of-O before you begin developing a tract of land.
Most Nigerians commence development without waiting for a C-of-O because the latter takes eternity to procure, often at exorbitant cost. If a land-owner were to wait that long, trespassers might encroach upon the land, which is the beginning of another round of heartache. But being in physical possession, even without a C-of-O, or consent, has become an insurance against loss of the land. Yet, whether the structure erected on the said land contravenes the planning laws should ordinarily not have anything to do with the certificate of occupancy. The penalty for an infraction of building regulations is not necessarily revocation of a C-of-O. That is why the minister first went ahead demolishing those structures that were deemed to have defaced the Abuja Masterplan, without revoking their Cs-of-O.
Little doubt exists that the proposed revocation of Abuja land titles is unpopular. There is, in fact, no question that members of the Federal cabinet are not together on the policy. Thus, while Malam el-Rufai has been declaring that he sought and got the President's approval for the revocation, the Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Mrs. Mobolaji Osomo, fumed shortly afterwards that her FCT counterpart could not purport to exercise the powers that he has claimed to have used. Mrs. Osomo's primary concern is that wholesale revocation of land titles and the attendant threat of nullification of earlier allocations would gravely compromise the Federal Government's promise to deliver on the housing backlog in the FCT.
If the Federal Executive Council had discussed and agreed on the revocation policy, it is doubtful whether the Housing Minister would ventilate her frustration the way she did recently. It was, and still is, not sufficient that the FCT Minister appeared to have cleared the matter only with the President. The implications of enforcing the policy, as we have argued above, are enormous. Yet, the scandalous prevalence of fake certificates of occupancy should not be tolerated. An approach the administrative audit needed to adopt would have been to zero in on suspect certificates whose holders could then be requested to revalidate them.
