RECENTLY INTRODUCED MEASURES PERTAINING TO PERFECTION PROCESS OF LAND TITLE DOCUMENTS IN LAGOS STATE.

This week a Webinar was organized between the Legal Advisers & Company Secretaries of the various banks in Nigeria with the Lagos State Attorney General & Commissioner for Justice, Mr. Moyosore Onigbanjo, SAN, the Lagos State Registrar of Titles, Mrs. M. A. Alli-Balogun and the Permanent Secretary of the Lagos State Ministry of Lands, Mr. Bode Agoro and the topic of discussion centered on “Managing the Perfection Process in Lagos State in an era of Covid 19”. Basically referring to the process of perfection of Land Title documents in Lagos State at this Covid-19 pandemic period.

Succinctly, here are some of the newly introduced measures:

* Owing to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Ministry of Lands is on skeletal work and not open to the general public. Be that as it may, the Customer Center is operational and still accept applications for further processing . It accept applications for Certificate of Occupancy, Governors’ Consent, release of legal mortgages etc.

* However, for your application to be accepted at the customer center, your application which is expected to be on your letter head paper MUST have a functional email address, phone number and contact address clearly written on it. The application letter together with all other required support documents should be enclosed in a sealed envelope and dropped at a designated area at the center.

This shall be further processed and correspondences shall be sent to you either by email, text messages or phone calls.

* For now, applications for searches have been suspended. This is because of the high volume of request for searches that are usually received by the Ministry and most importantly the ongoing digitalization of the land registry. At present, there is the scanning and sorting of land title files at the state lands registry. The scanning is currently being done and some files have been moved out of the registry to the digitalization center still within the Ministry, hence all searches on title document suspended for now.

Its pertinent to note that the scanning/digitalization activities cannot be completely left to ad-hoc staffs or
consultant to handle due to the sensitivity of the files cum the legal and statutory responsibilities placed on the registry.

Therefore, the registry members of staff have to be involved in the scanning process which also involve the tracing of all files relating to every root of title to be compiled in one electronic file.

* As a result of the above explained, the digitalization process might lead to delay at the registration stage of the process of Certificate of Occupancy and Governor’s Consent.

* The good news is that upon completion of the digitalization process, searches will be fully automated and can then be done from the comfort of the homes and offices of accredited users.

* Then, application for Certificate of Occupancy, Governor’s Consent and perfection of mortgages can then be equally be done electronically.

Applicants will only be required to come at certain stages of the application process to bring the originals of required documents for sighting.

* The public should note that there are no missing files in the Lands Registry, although there are misplaced files. Meanwhile, compilation of all misplaced files is ongoing and there is a collaborative arrangement with the owners of the files to get the documents in those files back to the registry.

* The Lagos State Government holds the view, that the Land Use Act gives the Governor of the State the power to control and manage all the land in the State. As such, “Federal Lands” in Lagos have to obtain a Lagos State certificate of occupancy before they can be allowed to build on such lands.

* The Lagos State Government is not opposed to the use of block chain technology in the Ministry of Lands. However, the basic requirement for any technology is the digitalization of the data which is what is currently being done. After the data has been digitalized, there can be discussions as to the pros and cons of block chain technology. For now, the focus of the Ministry of Lands is to digitalize all files in the Lands Registry from inception and to be scanning incoming applications as they are being received.

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