‘Land Acquisition, Bane Of Housing Deficit’

A university teacher,
Professor Timothy Nubi of the University of Lagos has described difficulties in acquiring land as one of the key factors responsible for the housing deficit in the country.
He said that the land Use Act of 1978 which should have been an instrument of addressing land ownership and titles, turned out to be counter productive in the country.
Nubi who was reacting to the housing situation in Nigeria in an interview with journalists in Lagos, said that under the Act, only the governor of a state had the power to issue a Certificate of Occupancy (C of O).
He stressed that problems encountered in title transfer and registration in Nigeria could be traced to perceptible defects in the Land Use Act of 1978.
“This would have been okay if not for problems associated with time wastage, expensive processing and endemic corruption which undermines property transaction and investment,” he said.
Nubi also underscored the need to reduce the costs and bottlenecks in efforts to obtain title documents, stressing that the governor’s consent for transfer of title should not be more than one percent of the value of cost of the property.
He said, “the processing time for title registration and governor’s consent should not be more than 15 days, and the governor’s consent for transfer of title should not be more than one percent of the value or cost of property.”
According to him, the practice of asking for numerous supporting documents such as tax clearance, development levy, tenement rates, should be entirely removed as a requirement for the processing of title transfer.
“Government should also deploy more human, financial and technical resources to man the processing offices so as to curtail bureaucracy, as well as reduce the level of corruption associated with it”, he said.