Worried by the incessant reports of proliferation of illegal survey documents, violation of the IT systems by fraudulent persons making the government to loss a whopping sum of over N10 billion annually, the FCT Administration has launched new AGIS Systems Infrastructure to block the menace.
FCT Minister, Bala Abdulkadir Mohammed, made this disclosure on Tuesday at the commissioning ceremony of the New Abuja Geographic Information System (AGIS) Systems Infrastructure at the AGIS Complex, Central Business District, Abuja.
The Minister revealed that these fraudulent activities have led to cases of double allocations, land racketeering and forgery with estimated racketeering business at over N10 billion.
Also, the Upgrade would provide AGIS Back-up data centre and state-of-the art 2013/2014 Models Geomedia Satellite Imagery equipment that covers the entire FCT and some neighboring states.
According to him, the Administration has also signed an MOU with the equipment manufacturers such as Microsoft Corporation, Gilat Satcom and others for two years of maintenance of the installed equipment.
The Minister further disclosed that with the flag-off of Accelerated Area Council and Sectional Title Re-Issuance Scheme (AACTRIS) two years ago, over 6,000 applications have been cleared, 518 Mass Housing Applications have been processed while 1,118 applications have been cleared awaiting Certificates of Occupancy for re-issue of their titles with over N520 million been realized as revenue within two years.
Mohammed also revealed that he recently approved the allocation of over 3,000 plots across the six Area Councils, which were earlier recommended by the respective Area Councils’ Chairmen.
Commissioning the AGIS Upgraded Information Technology Infrastructure, the Senate President David Mark commended the FCT Administration for embarking on this very innovative project as it would drastically curtail, if not totally eliminate fraudulent activities of land racketeers.
Mark, who was represented at the occasion by the Senate Leader, Victor Ndoma Egba expressed delight over this landmark effort of the FCT Administration to ensure that a strategic area of its mandate is achieved.
He noted that the challenge of fraud in the administration of land in the FCT has been a source of worry to both government as well as FCT landlords and lauded the FCT Minister for raising to the challenge of nipping on the bud such nefarious activities.
Also speaking at the occasion, the FCT Permanent Secretary, John O. Chukwu fnse, said that the commissioning represents the harvest of another dividend of the Transformation Agenda of President Goodluck Jonathan and congratulated the Minister.
In her remark, the Executive Director of AGIS, Mrs. Jamilah Tangaza emphasized that given the rapidity and continuous changes in today’s technology-driven world, AGIS decided to embark on the Systems Upgrade in order to safeguard the security of land titles.
Tangaza explained that the Systems Upgrade also provides an opportunity for the AGIS IT Unit to upgrade and tighten the effective Domain Access and Systems Security Policies in order to guard against future security breaches.
