Following the two-week deadline set by the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, for those who owe ground rents to pay up or have their property revoked, the Abuja Geographic Information Systems (AGIS) headquarters has become a hive of activity, with the administration recording over N1 billion in revenue daily.<\/p>\n
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It has been seen that ground rent debtors besiege the AGIS office on a daily basis in order to beat the deadline and prevent the impending revocation of their property.<\/p>\n
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The acting director of AGIS, Isiaku Ndatsu Alfa, stated that there has been a surge in payment of ground rents since the Minister threatened revocation and commenced publication of the debtors.<\/p>\n
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According to him, collections from June to July were at the lowest ebb, but immediately after the Minister\u2019s actions in August, ground rent earnings quickly rose to N500m, growing steadily to over N1bn.<\/p>\n
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He said that by September 17, ground rents had generated precisely N1.9bn, and the figure is estimated to double by the end of the month.<\/p>\n
The director explained that the platform will give the freedom wherever anybody is so that in the comfort of his home, he can log in and feed in some necessary information, which will lead to the payment of ground rent depending on the area and lines of his property.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThat is the way going forward, and very soon, we can launch that App into the remita, so the app will have an interface with the remita.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThis is the first time in the inception of the FCT that we have somebody at the helm of affairs, the FCT minister, who cares about the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR).<\/p>\n
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\u201cIf you do not have revenue or you have dwindling revenues, you might not be able to embark on some capital projects as it were, so, ever since the honourable minister came in his wisdom.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI do not want to say he warned but he advised that all property owners within the FCT should make it as a point of duty to meet up with their part of the obligations, as far as the ground rent payments are concerned.<\/p>\n
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\u201cTo our amazement, and happiness, there was a surge at the customer service area and that surge also translated into recoveries, in the sense that monies that were being owed are now being paid,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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To cope with the surge of customers into AGIS, the director revealed that additional laptops and computer systems have been procured, and redeployment of staff within sections has been effected to meet the Minister\u2019s two-week ultimatum.<\/p>\n
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He further said that the collection of ground rent payments is about 300 percent of what they collected before the present administration.<\/p>\n
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Corroborating the Acting Director, AGIS, Director, Department of Land Administration, FCTA, Jibril Adamu Husseini, applauded the FCT minister for the decision, saying it was the only way to collect the iveren N34bn debt.<\/p>\n
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He stated that non-payment of ground rents was \u201ca breach of terms and breach of the condition of allocation.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The director however said, \u201cThere is an upsurge in the response to the pronouncement and it is very positive and people are coming to pay.\u201d<\/p>\n
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He stated that ground rent was a statutory payment for land, as long as the allocation has been made, you must pay ground rent whether on-demand or not, it is not that we must demand it.<\/p>\n
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\u201cAs an allottee, it is a right that you must pay ground rent to the government, whether we demand it or not.\u201d<\/p>\n
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He however, disclosed that, over the years, Lands has been advertising, advising allottees to pay, \u201cbut we don\u2019t go to the extent of publishing all the plot numbers, file numbers, but with the publication, it has enlightened people the more and yielded more positive result.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The director also explained that ground rent was paid on land allocation, whether developed or not, while the tenement rate is payable on developed properties and advised all debtors to come out and pay because no one tests the government and risks revocation of the title.<\/p>\n
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Attempts to get the views of the debtors who thronged the AGIS office for payment proved abortive, as anybody approached to interview angrily rebuffed because they were paying grudgingly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Following the two-week deadline set by the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, for those who owe ground rents to pay up or have their property revoked, the Abuja Geographic Information Systems (AGIS) headquarters has become a hive of activity, with the administration recording over N1 billion in revenue daily. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-2325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-featured"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2325"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2326,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2325\/revisions\/2326"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}