The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and several states in Nigeria are losing trillions in revenue due to property owners’ failure to pay ground rents.
Ground rent is a property tax levied by the government on land with a Certificate of Occupancy or Right of Ownership. Property owners are required to pay this within a specified period.
Investigations conducted by Daily Trust reveal that only a handful of states are actively enforcing ground rent collection, with Lagos, Kaduna, Kano, and the FCT leading in this regard.
Just last week, the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) announced the recovery of over N2 billion following a two-week ultimatum given to property owners.
The paper maintained that efficient rent collection through Geographic Information System (GIS) could potentially earn them trillions of naira.
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In the FCT alone, approximately 66,267 land allottees owe a staggering N34 billion in ground rent. The Minister of the FCT, Nyesom Wike, has expressed his commitment to retrieving these funds for infrastructural development.
On their part, the FCTA had been publishing defaulters’ plot numbers in national dailies, threatening to revoke their titles if they failed to pay within the allotted time.
Director of Information and Communication, FCTA, Muhammad Hazat Sule, told Daily Trust that it was no longer acceptable not to pay ground rent in the FCT, warning that such titles would be revoked in accordance with the Land Use Act.
‘’The government needs this money for infrastructural development and many other things. I can assure you that the minister will collect this money. If you are a property owner, you’d better come forward within the stipulated time to pay your ground rent, if not, your property is at risk,’’ he said.
According to him, many estates within Abuja city are depriving the administration huge amounts from ground rents by refusing to send the data of their subscribers to the FCTA through the AGIS.
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He said: “Every estate owner is required to capture the data of their subscribers to the AGIS, which will in turn issue a Certificate of Ownership to each of the subscribers who will now be paying ground rent. But this is not so because the estate owners don’t want the subscribers to take complete ownership of such property due to service charges they are collecting.’’
He said the administration was working to address this in the interest of all the parties involved.
On why many states are not tapping ground rents to boost their internally generated revenue, the director said: “You know you spend money to get money. Most of the states are only interested in getting the money and that is why some mostly depend on federal allocation.
‘’Here in FCT, we spent a lot to set up the Abuja Geographic Information System (AGIS), to enlighten land allottees on the need to pay ground rent and we also spent money to publish defaulters’ names in the media to serve as caution for others as well as forcing them to pay. Most of the state governments can’t or are not willing to spend such money. The minister is empowered by law to do this,’’ he said.