July 21, 2008.
PRESS RELEASE
DPA BACKS LAGOS ASSEMBLY’S MOVE AGAINST LAND-USE CHARGES
The Democratic Peoples’ Alliance (DPA) has welcomed moves by the Lagos
State House of Assembly to abrogate or down-tone the law on Land-Use
charges, and urged legislators to muster the political will to tame the
offensive piece of legislation.
In a Press Statement by Lagos DPA’s Director of Publicity, Felix
Oboagwina, the party, which had in April spearheaded a campaign against
the excessive land-use charges and encouraged aggrieved Lagosians to seek
legal redress, said the lawmakers’ move vindicated DPA’s earlier
stand. DPA then had described Lagos State’s Land-Use Charges as
unreasonable and overly exploitative, while accusing state officials of
overvaluing landed property in total disregard for the social security
that real estate traditionally meant to Nigerians.
Describing the Land-Use Charge Law 2001 as a draconian statute passed by a
less sensitive generation of legislators, DPA said the current lawmakers
owed themselves and Lagosians the duty to undo an error that should never
have occurred in the first place.
The party said: “The Legislature must muster the political will to undo
this wrong. Although Action Congress-dominated, the House should resist
all temptations to treat the issue like another AC family affair as that
will amount to the tyranny of the powerful minority. This is because all
Lagosians, without exception, want to be free from the clutches of this
monstrosity.”
According to DPA, the Legislature’s scrapping of the law would deliver
the greatest good to the greatest number and underscore the
checks-and-balances that helped democracy to thrive.
DPA wondered why officials retroactively applied the law to commence in
2006, when the consolidated scheme took off only this year after the
government published the rates in the newspapers.
The party’s statement recapped the case of the two widows and children
of late Alhaji Eyiowuawi Asafa, inheritors of his one-story,
face-me-I-face-you building at 11, Zamba Street, Surulere. Whereas in 2007
the Itire/Ikate Local Government charged the family N2,700 as tenement
rate, state officials imposed a backdated 2006 rating under the land-use
charge at N98,842.89 (which rose to N197,685.79 over delayed payment).
Government in 2008 valued the premises at N30,311,820.75, and slapped a
land-use charge of N113,669.33.
This means that the house was doubly billed for 2006, the tenement rate
(which it paid) and the Land-Use charges (which jacked up the erstwhile
ratable value of the building to N30 million).
“If the government will pay N30 million for the house, we will gladly
sell it,” DPA reported a representative of the Ashafa family as saying.“Our last assessment, for Notary purposes, put the value at no more than
N5 million, so the government’s price is very attractive and they can
come and buy it from us.”
DPA, also, contested what it regarded as the state government’s usurping
of a constitutionally-allotted function of local governments. In the
Fourth Schedule, titled, “Functions of a Local Government Council,”
the Constitution stipulates in Section 1(j) that, “The main functions
of a local government council are as follows… assessment of privately
owned houses or tenements for the purpose of levying such rates as may be
prescribed by the House of Assembly of a State.”
“As currently operated now, the Land-Use Charges will fire up rent
increases as landlords will simply pass the cost to their tenants, and
tenants to consumers of their products and services,” DPA said.
Unlike the old regime where, apart from the yearly tenement rates, some
charges are once-in-a-lifetime payments (such as Neighbourhood Improvement
Charges), the new-fangled land-use charge demands annual payments that
graduate upwards yearly.
DPA also questioned the government’s moral right to demand those
charges, having failed to provide Lagos residents with commensurate
services like good roads, decent drainage, good waste disposal, adequate
security, street lighting, potable water, etc.
FELIX OBOAGWINA
Director of Publicity, Lagos DPA
08033327355