Improved land registration in plateau sate and its impact on land market and government revenue

Solomon Hoomlong, Chiemeka Ngwu, Gabriel S. Arancibia

In an environment where institutional deficiency operates with high level of inadequate quality human resources, endemic level of corruption, bureaucratic bottlenecks and delays in the processing of land documents, the introduction of the Geographic Information System into land administration in both developed and developing countries has brought forward positive impacts in various ways. Hence improvements in the land markets and government revenue generated are evident. It is against this backdrop that this paper seeks to examine the impacts of the improved Registration of Land rights on land market and government revenue in Plateau State, Nigeria, by examining the challenges of improving land rights registration, identifying and evaluating the conditions of the land markets before and after the improved registration and an analysis of government revenue accrued from land transaction (first registration, ground rents collection, assignments, mortgages). Plateau State, Nigeria, has slowly transformed the Ministry of Lands, Survey and Town Planning (MLSTP) for many years to provide modern services in land administration which culminated into a significant modernization initiative in 2013. This comprehensive transformation focused on replacing the hybrid system, mainly paper-based procedures with some components using a preliminary computerized solution, into a leading-edge workflow information technology solution for land registration, cadastral and also for the Town Planning department. The obsolete system was unable to efficiently conduct the typical land property procedures at the Ministry office in Jos, and the growing number of applicants was consistently frustrated with the numerous steps and lengthy processes. This situation constituted a main barrier for land transactions, and inhibited land tenure security with an incipient real property market, yet with a growing demand for housing in Jos mainly due to the high rate of migration of human population to urban centers. Because there were so many unapproved procedural hurdles in play which added extra layers of complexities to land ownership it became imperative that something urgent was required to fix the situation once and for all. In addition to that, the long period of time to secure a land transaction was a fertile environment for corruption and bureaucratic weak practices at the institutional level. The statutory Title, the Certificate of Occupancy (C of O), issued under the Land Use Act 1978, for users of the land was not in production for over eight (8) years because government believed rightly so that issuing Titles under the existing conditions was making a bad situation worse by creating more unsecure land ownership in Plateau State. When you also add this to the cause of the government failure to formalize informal land, then you are faced with even more chaos, hence the government in 2013 initiated the upgrade of Plateau Geographical Information System (PLAGIS) project to fix the issues. This paper describes the encouraging business benefits on the land market and government revenue after delivering the upgrade of the Plateau Geographical Information System (PLAGIS) in 2015. The Plateau government invested in the whole process to enhance institutional framework and provide a streamlined solution to the Ministry of Lands, Survey and Town Planning. The challenges to achieve a successful implementation of the solution are briefly described and also the approach to transform not only the negative institutional perception of the Ministry. This document also analyses the context of the problem by reviewing the creation of transparent land governance, as well as the evolution of the solution to bring more sense to provide secure, scalable and sustainable land information system in Plateau. The main focus of this paper is a comparative analysis of essential indicators related to the behavior of the land market in Jos, the capital city of Plateau State. It is...

Event: Land Governance in an Interconnected World_Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty_2018

Only personal, non-commercial use of this document is allowed.

Document type:Improved land registration in plateau sate and its impact on land market and government revenue (359 kB - pdf)