Use Technology To Improve Land Management, Adegboruwa Tells LASG

Lagos based lawyer, Ebun –Olu Adegboruwa, SAN has urged Lagos State government to deploy technology to ease the process of land registration and improve land management in the state.

The Principal Partner, Adegboruwa and Co., Ebun who stated this in Lagos during the first Stakeholders’ Forum organized by the Office of the State Surveyor-General (OSSG) in Alausa, Ikeja, Lagos, yesterday, noted that embracing ease and convenience in processing title documents for landed property and the improved land administration will open the state for economic growth and attract several investors.

He noted that the stakeholders summit with the theme “Emerging Technologies for Optimised Geospatial Application and Service Delivery in the 21st Century,” is apt and in consonance with present reality in the country.

Adegboruwa said, ‘’The process of bearing files from one stage to the other in the process of approval, the process of rendering advice is cumbersome not only to the judiciary, even in survey departments for us to do certain things.

‘’The people we are following, western countries have moved ahead. The problem we have with the judiciary is our conservative approach of governance to things and ways of doing things, the case I cited earlier lingered from 1997 to 2020, almost thirty years and yet the person is still in possession of the property wrongly acquired.

‘’It cuts across all areas of our life and the only solution to it is to deploy technology in tackling office management thereby removing human intervention in governance to considerable level.’’

He also urged the federal government to devolve powers to the state, local government and grassroots level, as part of measures to check corruption among the Nigerian elite.

‘’Powers belonging to the federal government are too enormous. You cannot sit in Abuja and begin to roll out money to several departments. This is what is brewing corruption in our land. If the state and local government are being empowered, they will use their resources to better the lives of their people.’’

Earlier, the Permanent Secretary/Surveyor-General of Lagos State PS/SG (OSSG), Olutomi Ajose Sangowawa, in his welcome address, said the maiden edition of the stakeholder’s forum convened by the Office of the State Surveyor-General, was to forge a partnership that will strengthen the  ties between government, property owners and stakeholders in the built environment.

According to Sangowawa: “This initiative will foster a more cordial relationship among stakeholders, investors and regulators, just as it defines, in clear terms, the requirements for adopting 21st Century techniques for optimised geospatial applications and service delivery.”