| Revocation
of Abuja Cs of O
By Sun News
Monday, July 19, 2004
Owners of landed property in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory
(FCT), were recently jolted by the news that their valid legal
documents to plots of land in the city were no longer valid,
courtesy of a curious mass revocation of all Certificates
of Occupancy (Cs of O) and title deeds of plots of land in
the FCT.
By executive fiat, the Federal Capital Territory Minister,
Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, has declared all certificates evidencing
titles ever issued by the FCT administration invalid.
Owners of the nearly 20,000 Cs of O revoked will be able to
revalidate them, only if the FCT ministry is convinced that
the land and buildings thereon are free of land use and building
code violations and other service and utility line violations
like building on sewer or water lines, encroachment on transport
corridors and structures that endanger general safety.
Title owners who hope to have their Cs of O revalidated also
have to convince the FCT administration that they have paid
all fees, fines, levies, charges, surcharges and penalties,
as well as outstanding bills, including those of FCT Water
Board, Land Registry, Abuja Environmental Protection Board,
FCDA Development Control and other agencies.
El-Rufai says he obtained President Olusegun Obasanjo's approval
for the measure when irregularities were discovered after
the computerisation of the cadastral and land information
registry in Abuja.
He also alleges that internal probe panels and investigations
by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and
other law enforcement agencies revealed widespread racketeering,
and forging of land applications Rights of Occupancy, Certificates
of Occupancy, land allocations, and payment records in the
Ministry of Federal Capital Territory, (MFCT).
We do not support this unwholesome and questionable attempt
to further inconvenience genuine land owners with this spurious
revalidation/re-certification exercise of the ministry.
The drastic measure is not only insensitive, it is of questionable
motive.
The decision is also of doubtful legality, since the Cs of
O, some of which were issued over ten years ago, were not
given subject to any terms concerning renewal or re-certification,
at any time in future.
The Minster's later explanation that he had not ordered a
"revocation" of Cs of O, but a "withdrawal"
to enable the ministry re-issue new ones which will be difficult
to forge, is puerile, an afterthought, and unconvincing.
The withdrawal theory, conveyed via a press release, is conveniently
silent on the long list of conditions which owners of Cs of
O have to meet, before their documents could be revalidated
as given by the Minister at the earlier press conference where
the revocation order was announced.
If the MFCT has discovered any discrepancies, forgeries or
fraud in land allocation, documentation and transactions,
as it claims, the minister will do well to handle these on
individual basis.
Those who are identified as holding questionable or forged
Certificates of Occupancy should be called upon to answer
whatever questions the ministry may have for them.
If the ministry is convinced that their certificates are forged
or illegally obtained, it could go ahead to revoke them.
But a blanket revocation of all Abuja Cs of O, or even a "withdrawal"
of the documents as the minister prefers to call it, with
a proviso that they will not be re-validated until all manner
of spurious bills, including water rates, are paid, is unfair
to innocent and law abiding land owners who have genuine Cs
of O.
If there are people who are guilty of not paying their water
rates and other bills, we believe there are laid down procedures
for dealing with them. Certainly, revocation of Certificates
of Occupancy cannot be one of them. Let El-Rufai follow laid
down laws and procedures in dealing with the different problems
identified in the land information registry of the MFCT.
This blanket revocation/ withdrawal of title documents is
unjust. It will visit great inconvenience on Abuja land owners,
most of whom hold genuine titles, and all of whom according
to the laws of Nigeria, should be deemed innocent of all violations
complained of by El-Rufai, until the MFCT is able to prove
them guilty.
We urge the MFCT and President Obasanjo, who gave the purported
approval, to drop this idea of a general revocation of all
Abuja title deeds.
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