Kwara signs MoU on land administration

The Kwara State Governor, Dr. Abdulfatah Ahmed, on Wednesday signed Memorandum of Understanding on land administration with EcoBank and Southgate Technologies Consortium.

Speaking during the ceremony at Government House, Ilorin, Ahmed said the digitisation of land administration was an e-governance initiative meant to introduce efficiency into land administration, create optimal utilisation of wealth and effective deployment of goods and services in the state.

Ahmed said the reform is a giant step towards efficiency in deployment of goods and services to create maximum impact on majority of people through the deployment of technology.

He said the MOU will lead to an improvement in the quality of service delivery, shorten turnaround time and maintain consistency in services.

The Governor stated that the digitisation of land administration in the Kwara State will bring about an increase in the Internally Generated Revenue, with an estimated annual revenue on lands administration above N5 billion, reduce fraud and improve ease of doing business.

Ahmed added that it will improve public perception of state bureaucracy and strengthen institutional capacity as well as improve overall performance of public service.

The PPP has a model of Design-Build-Finance-Maintain and Transfer, with a tenor of five years.

The Governor noted that the state has not taken advantage of technology to optimise the way and manner revenues are generated, saying there was the need to take a leap away from a crude oil driven economy to a more efficient one by taking advantage of all assets that are available and translating them into wealth creation.

He said: “Our economic growth in this country is tied to oil and we must begin to move away from that area because we are heavily reliant on the centrally allocated funds garnered from the sales of crude oil.

“The only available way is to improve efficiency by taking advantage of platform created by technology.”

In his remarks, the Director-General of KP3, Yomi Ogunsola, said the government had to commence with land reforms to enable the state rank among the best in Ease of Doing Business in the country.