THE recent disclosure by the Lagos State government that 80 per cent of buildings in Ibeju-Lekki had no approval raises concerns about the government’s effective monitoring of various estates and constructions despite the state’s large number of ministries and agencies saddled with the responsibilities.
It also raises concerns about government officials’ negligence in monitoring and enforcing building regulations in the state.
Ibeju-Lekki, a local government area (LGA) is home to the Lekki Free Trade Zone, the Dangote refinery, and a beacon for real estate investors seeking promising opportunities.
On Monday, May 6, the Lagos State Commissioner for Physical Planning and Urban Development (PPUD), Oluyinka Olumide, told journalists that 80 per cent of buildings in the LGA did not have government approval.
Olumide said the buildings involved had been marked for demolition, pointing out that the Ibeju-Lekki corridor was zoned as agricultural land.
According to him, the first step in the procedure is to get the planning information on what the area is zoned out for.
He said that developers or builders could then secure a fence permit, a layout permit and other building regulation requirements.
“Just last week, Thursday and Friday, the team and I were on the Ibeju Lekki and Epe axis, and you would agree with me that anybody passing through that corridor would see a lot of estates marked. We went there, and I can tell you that from what we saw, over 80 per cent of them do not have approval,” Olumide said.
While he revealed the percentage of buildings without approvals, the commissioner did not disclose the number of buildings affected or the total number of buildings in the Ibeju-Lekki corridor.
This also raises the question of whether the commissioner spoke from the point of available data with the state authorities.
The Ibeju-Lekki revelation is among the various estates and construction sites in Lagos State, where sharp practices have led to the demolition of buildings worth billions of naira.
From the most recent demolition at Mende estate in Maryland, there have been alarming rates of building demolition in other parts of the state, which include Festac, Okota, Lagos Island, Ifako-Ijaiye, Alimosho, Yaba, Ebute Metta, Surulere, Agege, and Oworonshoki.
These destructions result in the loss of assets to estate developers, subscribers, and house owners, who are mostly at the receiving end.
Real estate developers, agents, financiers, realtors, marketers, and other practitioners in the building business have at various times expressed their displeasure.
The ICIR, in one of its publications in November 2023, reported the worries of these actors in the building business, including the negligence and fraudulent activities of some government officials.
Other concerns were the rigorous processes for acquiring building permits, the bureaucratic bottlenecks associated with many regulatory authorities—state ministries, agencies, and parastatals related to the building business—and the lack of a central digital system for verifying the genuineness of landed properties.
Negligence of state officials
While the Lagos state tries to enforce the law, a real estate expert and facility manager, Stephen Jagun, expressed concern that the government appeared to be using the developers and subscribers as scapegoats.
He said, “some of them used their entire life savings, and now they have nowhere to go, and they will be thrown into nothing. In a good clan, everybody involved is supposed to face the wrath of the law.”
Jagun noted that there were several stages and steps to be taken, and developers were supposed to get approval at every stage, wondering why the authorities would see some wrong construction of buildings and look away.
“Now, they (the government) want to destroy those buildings. Why didn’t they stop the buildings at that time?
“Some officials were negligent in their duties, and the government is not saying anything about them. It takes two to tangle. Some people played games on them (developers and subscribers), giving them the impression that they could go away with the wrong things,” he pointed out.
He urged the government to speak boldly, accept its faults, and sanction officials who compromised their position to abuse the system.
He added, “We claim we are developing wealth, but those houses they are destroying cannot be brought back. Those may be the assets of individuals, but they are also society’s assets.
“So, some people should be meant to face the penalties of the law. Buildings don’t just spring up in 24 hours. There is no way some of those buildings would not have taken two to three months to build. But somebody looked away.
“Unfortunately, some of the people now whose houses are being pulled down are retired people. I do not support disobeying the law, but somebody in the government allowed them to do so.”
No official documentation of buildings – Ibeju-Lekki LGA
The ICIR gathered that there is currently no official data on the number of buildings at Ibeju-Lekki LGA.
When contacted, the Council Chairman, Abdullahi Olowa, did not pick up his calls and had yet to respond to the WhatsApp message sent to him when the reporter filed the report.
However, the council public affairs officer, Maryam Hamsat, told The ICIR that the LGA had lost the record of the number of buildings in Ibeju-Lekki.
She said all the documents at the council were destroyed during the End-SARS protests in 2020.
“I have tried to do what you requested, but unfortunately, we don’t have the data because of the End-SARS saga. We don’t have any of such documents now; the council was burnt down then, and we are now trying to compile new documents,” Hamsat said.
Also, the public affairs officer at the PPUD, Mukaila Sanusi, did not pick up calls to his phone line and had yet to respond to text and WhatsApp messages when filing this report.
The ICIR reporter had asked the PPUD official to respond to the number of construction sites currently in Lagos state, what it takes to monitor those sites, and why the plans to partner with the private sector in the building regulatory process have yet to materialise.
The Lagos state government has planned to partner with the private sector in building regulatory processes since 2021 through the office of the PPUD and the Lagos State Building Control Agency (LASBCA). The initiative has yet to come to fruition.
The partnership, to be christened ‘Accredited Certifiers Programme,’ aims to achieve zero tolerance for building collapses in the state through effective monitoring and inspection of all ongoing constructions, as the government said it could not do it alone.
Must-have documents for building approval process in Lagos
A property developer or owner must have documents for every stage of the building approval process. These include:
- Proof of ownership—certified true copy of title, C of O, Governor’s consent, deed of stamp duties on land or purchase receipt, and deed of conveyance.
- Survey plan/beacon sheet
- Five sets of working drawings—architectural, structural, mechanical, and electrical—with supporting documents like COREN (Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria), a letter of supervision or soil tests, and a calculation sheet, as applicable.
- Photocopy of payment receipts for statutory fees: processing fees, stage certification, penal fees, and IDC (infrastructure development charges) as applicable.
- Clearances from relevant MDAs: Land Use and Allocation Committee (LUAC), New Towns Development Authority (NTDA), Lagos State Urban Renewal Agency (LASURA), Ministry of the Environment (MOE)—Drainage/ Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency (LASEPA), Ministry of Transport—Traffic Impact Assessment (TIA)/Metro line), Fire Service and Police report as applicable.
- Planning technical reports, i.e. Land Use Planning and Analysis Report (LUPAR) and Physical Planning Technical Report PPTR (where applicable)
- Evidence of tax payment to an individual.
- Certificate of incorporation for corporate organisation.