For a long time, the land administration system in Nigeria has been fraught with bottlenecks, delays and endless processes that make land transaction business hard and tiring. In light of this, the Lagos State Land Bureau, with the support of the State Governor Mr. Akinwumi Ambode , has launched an Integrated Land and Automation System (ILAAS) that is geared towards alleviating this situation.

According to the Permanent Secretary of the state’s Land Bureau, Mr. Bode Agoro, the new system will be available for use in 18 months. ILAAS is a technology module that can conduct rapid inventory of land rights, manage land records, create/measure integrated geographic data accurately and fairly value any property. The new innovation would greatly cut down the time frame for obtaining a Certificate of Occupancy to a maximum of 14 days, optimize revenue collected from land transactions and also reduce the cost of land transactions.

Mr. Agoro went ahead to state that to achieve the speedy issuance of C of O, the Bureau has embraced the E-Survey project, a digital electronic format in the production of survey plans that produces within a very short time. In preparation for this, the Permanent Secretary said the Bureau is in the process of creating quality control units to vet and scrutinize land registrations, adding that all former documents will be scanned and converted to electric modes. ”The deployment of the new technology would result in improved service delivery to policy and decision makers, businesses and private citizens more timely access to information thus enhancing transparency while at the same time, increasing public confidence. This intervention is designed to manage information and automate business activities related to property rights registration, transacting and contracting real property and digital preservation of land-related documents”, the Permanent Secretary said.