A trending issue in the FCT is outstanding ground rents. Ground rent is a statutory tax for every land title created by the FCT Administration (FCTA) in the federal capital. That is why every Certificate of Occupancy (C of O) issued by the minister has provision for the payment of ground rent. Aside from that, the Land Use Act of 1978, Section 16 to 20, speaks about the position of ground rent.
But the issue in the FCT, and other states as well, is that of management. All along, the FCTA has not put in place a management framework to actualise the collection and administration of ground rent.
Property owners are just being careless not to be paying the ground rent. Now the new FCTA has seen the opportunity and the huge money lying outside and has now demanded that allottees of land should settle their outstanding liabilities.
It is the issue of management that hampered the collection hitherto. So, except there is a proper management structure in place, we’ll go back to square one.
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The law is clear; that allottees have to pay ground rent whether demanded or not; meaning that you don’t wait for the government to ask you to pay.
However, for ease of administration, there was a time when some states of the federation created ground rent offices that issued demand notices, collected the rent and remitted to the governments.
Therefore, for the FCT, it is timely that ground rent offices should be created for each district or a combination of districts so that government officials can collect such rents and put in place a management strategy on how the rents would be managed for the betterment of residents.
The FCTA doesn’t need to go cap in hand to the federation account to look for money to fund the provision of infrastructure in the second and third phases of the city.
The rents collected from plots can be deployed into provision of infrastructure consecutively, a district can single-handedly raise N60 billion annually, these could be utilised and once people see this it will justify their further payment, even though it is statutory.
There are so many ways of collection, the government can as well engage consultants to collect such rents too but this idea of just one-off collection and keeping quiet should not be condoned.
We should encourage and put in place a system whereby annually land and title holders will find it very convenient to pay their rent even if it means providing a window like AGIS where one can log in with personal password and pay, people don’t have to go and queue to pay their bills. And as soon as payment is due one should be able to receive alerts on their phones.
Adamu Kasimu is an Abuja-based real estate surveyor and valuer.
