Lagos Govt, Stakeholders Back LAGIS Bill

Lagos State government and critical stakeholders have expressed their commitment and support for the Lagos State Geographic Information Service (LAGIS) Bill designed to support development programmes and provide a computerised and harmonised central database for all land administration processes in the state.

In their presentations during the LAGIS Bill Retreat held in Ikeja by the office of the e-GIS and Urban Development, top officials of Lagos State government from both the executive and legislative arms of government as well as other key stakeholders unanimously supported the bill.

The LAGIS Bill, which has passed through first and second readings at the Lagos State House of Assembly, when passed into law, will make the Lagos State Geographic Information Service a full-fledged agency to provide a computerised and harmonised central database for all land administration processes in Lagos State.

The special adviser to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu on e-GIS and Urban Development, Dr Olajide Babatunde, disclosed that the LAGIS Bill, when passed into law, would support development programmes such as tourism promotion, industrial development, boundary resolution, property valuation and revaluation for effective taxation and revenue collection.

He added that it would also help to facilitate seamless population and housing census operation as well as planning of urban and rural settlements, transportation, flood and erosion control, mineral development and communication planning, among others, in the state.

He said, “Lagos State Geographic Information Service is a service that will connect all the MDAs in Lagos, where we are all going to use data to make our processes more efficient. When the LAGIS Bill becomes law, we will be able to process building approvals seamlessly. What we hitherto did in 10 days, 20 days, or three months, we will be able to do in minutes.

“As we speak, even though the agency has not been birthed, we have been working as an Office of eGIS and Urban Development to make sure that all our MDAs that are working specifically on land-related matters – Office of Physical Planning, Office of Urban Development, Office of Surveyor-General, Land Matters, Office of Land Valuation – ensure that through technology, we can get to where we are today.”