OPIC Advises Prospective Buyers of Land to Conduct Checks
Estate practitioners, industrialists and other prospective buyers of landed properties in Ogun State have been advised to always conduct proper checks before committing funds and developing the property.
The Special Adviser/Managing Director, Ogun State Investment Corporation (OPIC), Mr. Babajide Odusolu gave the advice while on an inspection of OPIC Estate, Agbara/Igbesa where massive encroachment were discovered at the boundaries of OPIC’s Estate.
Odusolu said only proper title checks could promote safe, secure, genuine land purchase and building approvals.
The Managing Director ordered OPIC surveyors and managers to regularly conduct inspection patrols and keep surveillance of OPIC lands. He enjoined staff to be on the alert to promptly prevent encroachment.
In line with this directive, OPIC Management had worked out an efficient supervisory method that would ensure effective security of OPIC investments and opportunities, and also to streamline sales of OPIC land application forms to members of the public to guard against abuse, illegal allocation and encroachments of diverse nature.
OPIC is thus undertaking ratification exercise on punitive terms alone, he said. “Anyone who genuinely proves to have unwittingly purchased land from illegal land grabbers would be required to ratify such, paying a penal rate of 25% premium on OPIC’s prevailing rates.”
In addition, OPIC is introducing a registry for building material suppliers on its Estates to have proper monitoring.
On the development of illegal structures at OPIC’s Agbara Estate, Odusolu directed the enforcement team of the organisation to embark on a full scale demolition exercise of all structures illegally built on lands in OPIC Estate, Agbara/ Igbesa.
The team had previously marked for demolition, structures built on such illegally acquired lands and others flouting the Corporation’s allocation and planning regulations.
The Managing Director gave this order during an official tour of OPIC Estate, Agbara/ Igbesa where he inspected area 1 (Jubilee Park/residential area), Areas 2 and 3, and the Agbara – Ijanikin Lagoon link.
He condemned the activities of illegal occupants/private estates, block making industries and illegal trailer parks, which are considered as serious sources of revenue leakages and economic sabotage in the State. “Purchas- ing government lands from ‘land grabbers and speculators’ is economic sabotage. One of the cases investigated revealed that a suspect who ought to have paid N400 million to the Government coffers chose to patronize the fraudsters, paying just 10 per cent of what was due to the State.”
He lamented that despite the efforts made via the mass media to warn and educate the public and the ’land grabbers’ to desist from encroaching on government lands they were adamant. He however stressed that victims of illegally acquired land and structures who might be found to have acquired the land unknowingly will be accommodated on punitive terms but those found to have intentionally opted to defraud the government will be apprehended, and handed over to the law enforcement agents for prosecution.