The Ogun State Government has earmarked 37,000 hectares of land for the development of a new town that will straddle the Papalanto axis in Obafemi Owode Local Government all the way to Ifo in Ifo Local Government area.

The new town, which will be part of the Lagos Mega City, will take off from the left hand side of the Papalanto road where Nestle Nigeria Plc has its factory off the Abeokuta-Shagamu dual carriageway and will traverse Mowe, Ofada, Loburo and Ifo communities, among others.

However, the news may not be too pleasant to private developers, who have acquired hundreds of hectares of land in the area, especially around Papalanto, but the government has promised that those with genuine papers have nothing to fear

According to the Special Adviser to the Governor on Land Matters and Director-General, Bureau of Lands and Survey, Mrs. Ronke Sokefun, those with valid documents will be paid compensation, while the government will excise existing settlements in order for the indigenes to maintain their heritage.

Sokefun, who spoke in an interview with our correspondent on Wednesday, said in order to facilitate the establishment of the modern city that would be a model in physical planning and infrastructure, the state government had acquired 1.5 kilometre of land from the centre of the Papalanto road on the left hand side.

The immediate past administration in the state had caused a stir when it announced the acquisition of the area on the excuse that the private developers, who flocked to the area due to the availability of relatively cheap land, had not sufficiently commenced developments.

The Real Estate Developers Association of Nigeria cried foul and made spirited appeals to the government for a reconsideration of its action, while the villagers too protested the acquisition.

Eventually, a committee was set up to review the acquisition and verify all documents possessed by the developers so that billions of naira already committed to the axis would not go down the drain.

Sokefun said the Governor Ibikunle Amosun administration “has kick-started the new town development and we are about to do the master plan.”

Speaking on the Isheri-Shagamu interchange, off the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the special adviser said buyers of land in the area should do proper investigation before committing their resources because the state government had acquired two-kilometre breadth of land on either side of the expressway for the Ogun Property and Investment Corporation since 1994.

However, she said the affected villagers ganged up against the government and started selling large parcels of land to members of the public.

“That is why there is uncontrolled development in the area. However, we put our feet down and that is why there is a semblance of order in the axis now,” Sokefun said.

She, however, said that despite the various abuses, the Amosun administration had not taken land from anybody apart from those recommended by the judicial panel of enquiry set up by the governor to look into land administration in the state immediately he assumed office.

The special adviser said a lot of people that rushed to acquire land in the state did so for speculative reasons without adding any value to the land, with about seven agencies of government involved in the allocation of land to different classes of people.

Having met a sordid land administration process on ground, she said her first task was to undertake a holistic reform of the entire system that resulted in the reassessment of operations.

Sokefun said, “When I came in, I saw a report by the International Finance Corporation ranking Ogun State as the 36th on the ease of doing business index in the country, and one of the complaints was the timeline for land transactions.

“To correct this, we set out to automate our processes, but we had to first review our old policies. We carried out a basic process review through a consultant, Aviazon Consulting. The review involved reengineering and a lot of interviews; the firm worked for about six months and generated a workflow covering different areas of land transactions.”

She also said the bureau had commenced the use of the Electronic Data Management System to store vital land information on a central server that would be accessible from connected computers.

“When I came in, everything was 100 per cent manual. Files containing vital land information from the Western Region era were strewn on shelves. We have brought in special scanners and servers to capture records. We have been able to index those files now,” she said.

The next stage, according to her, is the Geographic Information System that will provide up-to-date satellite imageries for the entire state to aid planning, adding that the border communities would have images of 50cm, while others would have 80cm.

“Where we are going is for people to stay in their offices or homes and log on to our website and complete their land transactions. Computers are already installed in our search rooms and people can conduct their searches themselves after paying a token; we don’t want any exploitation,” Sokefun said.