PROPERTY TRANSACTION GUIDE

Lagos to replace paper C-of-Os with electronic certificates
By Akinpelu Dada

Punch, Monday 22nd March 2010

Very soon, the current paper Certificate-of-Occupancy being used in Lagos State will be phased out and replaced by a more secure electronic land title format in line with acceptable international standards on land administration and management.

Under the New Lagos State Certificate-of-Occupancy Project, all C-of-Os currently in circulation will be withdrawn and replaced with the eC-of-O, which officials say will be genuine and verifiable.

The objective of the project is to establish a fully automated and computerised method for issuing C-of-Os and increase public/investor confidence by instilling integrity in the C-of-Os issued by the state government.

Our correspondent gathered that a pilot phase of the recertification exercise is being planned for two government residential schemes to test the system with live applications in order to ensure that an excellent working order is in place.

According to the Permanent Secretary, Lagos State Lands Bureau, Mr. Gbenga Ashafa, "The recertification exercise is essentially an exchange of the current C-of-O, while at the same time verifying the authenticity of the C-of-O of each holder.

The second stage of the project is essentially the inauguration of the automated system of the day-to-day normal processing of eC-of-Os."

He added that the eC-of-O included state-of-the-art security features that would ensure that it could not be cloned or forged, while the paper that would be used as physical evidence of possessing the electronic certificate had been specially designed by a world renowned security document company.

To complement the new project, it was gathered that the Lands Bureau would also have in place a fully automated and computerised process for issuing C-of-Os with distinct security levels for each authorised user of the system and full audit trail of users.

Before now, the processing of C-of-Os in Lagos State has been bedevilled by bureaucratic bottlenecks that unnecessarily delayed the issuance of the document, with junior officials of the bureau capitalising on the system to milk applicants of their hard earned resources.

There have also been cases of multiple C-of-Os being issued to different parties on the same piece of land, leading to consuming litigations, while some people have perfected the art of cloning or illegally duplicating genuine C-of-Os with a view to perpetrating fraudulent transactions.