The Oyo State Commissioner for Lands, Housing and Urban Development, Mr. Akin-Funmilayo, has stated that the Ministry is strengthening its processes to ensure that all builders in the state comply with regulations aimed at curbing building collapses.
He, therefore, urged developers to seek proper approval and guidance from the Ministry before embarking on construction projects to prevent avoidable disasters.
“We will protect lives and property in the state by ensuring that homeowners and contractors comply with the building regulations. We don’t want to lose any life to building collapse. We also don’t want our people to lose their property. So, as a government, we will do what is required to stamp out building collapse in the state,” Akin-Funmilayo said.
The commissioner, who was accompanied
by senior officials from the Ministry, made this known on Thursday while addressing journalists at the afternoon session of the Omituntun 2.0 Inter-Ministerial Briefing.
He disclosed that about 15 Government Reserved Areas (GRAs) had been established through a public-private partnership model. He also highlighted several initiatives introduced by the Ministry, including electronic allocation letters, an online allocation and plot selection system via the Ministry’s website www.lands.oyostate.gov.ng, an amnesty programme for building permits, and the deployment of an online building permit platform.
Looking ahead, Akin-Funmilayo said the Ministry would focus on house numbering in the coming months.
“House numbering is one of the promises we made. Also, we’re pursuing the digitalisation and archiving of all documents in the Ministry. One of our major goals is to grant partial independence to the Physical Planning Department, allowing it to become a fully-fledged unit or division. We’ve already begun the administrative processes, and we expect significant progress before the year ends,” he said.
He credited Governor Seyi Makinde’s visionary leadership for the state’s increased Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), noting that the digitisation of land allocation and title documentation, alongside the creation of new GRAs, contributed significantly to revenue growth.
The commissioner revealed that the Ministry had issued 17,046 digital title documents since the inception of the Makinde administration. It also deployed the Oyo State Property Reference System to enhance property identification and land-based tax payments, helping expand the state’s tax net and improve revenue annually.
0 Comments