The Federal Capital Territory Administration said it is considering a collaboration between its revenue generating agencies following the rush by property owners to pay up their outstanding ground rent.
The Abuja Geographic Information Systems, AGIS, had recently disclosed that it recovered close to N2billion from payment of ground rents following the surge of debtors rushing to pay up their debts.
FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, had threatened to revoke lands belonging to those who are yet to pay ground rent.
Mandate Secretary of FCT Economic Planning, Revenue Generation and Public Private Partnership Secretariat, Barrister Charles Elechi, said the collaboration has become necessary, in order to take pressure off staff of AGIS who work even outside working hours.
Elechi, was on an unscheduled visit to Abuja AGIS, to ascertain the level of compliance and pace of work of AGIS staff.
According to him, “We came to urge you to continue to work hard, we know that the pressure, unnecessary pressure if you ask me, because the Minister’s view on some of these matters is, I’m saying this because after this rush, we should device a means of continuously, but let’s not be fooled by it, those who want to rush come, and also those who want to run the tape out, those who say let’s wait and see what happen, they will be there.
“It’s to encourage you to go on and as much as possible, we spoke about this in the morning, to collaborate with outlets, it used to be in those days, people even went to, I think was JAMB when they started their system, they even had to partner with private cyber cafes just to take the pressure off, so you have sister agencies like IRS and other ones, so take some of the pressure off, but you have to have your eye on the fact that everybody who owes ground rent must people.
“When the period for payment expires what is most important to us going forward is not those who pay, it is those who refuse to pay, once you see those who refuse to pay, when the rush is over we will definitely, whoever wants to eat his cake and have it, because ground rent is rent to government, if tenants pays rack rent to landlords, landlords also have to pay ground rent to government, the Minister said as a tenant why should you wait till the landlord chases you to pay, you don’t wait for the landlord to start chasing you to pay rack rent, in the same way if you can not pay ground rent, stay away from the land.”
The secretary also hinted that at the appropriate time, a certain percentage of revenue generated in the FCT would be given to back staff of its revenue generating agencies to motivate and encourage them to do more.
He said, “I have come from several revenue backgrounds myself, we know that revenue generating agencies, if everybody is working in synergy, it’s going to be like you get ten or twenty percent of revenue generated.
“We are trying to fix a meeting with all revenue generating agencies, we will look at it, when a cow is producing milk, to keep milk in it, you nourish it or at some point it is going to run out of milk, these are all practical things, we will not achieve what we want if we don’t sit down and work with only one thing at the back of our mind, the revenue of the FCTA.”
Responding on behalf of staff of AGIS, Deputy Director, Head of Administration, Bello Ishaq Mubi, promised to sustain the pace of the work and added that, “We have created a two hour window for civil servants who are beneficiaries of government houses, from the sales of government houses and the rest, after work, they come here, our staff are already on ground, they will not close until six o’clock virtually closing by seven, right from the start of the program.”
