The first phase of Nasarawa Geographic Information Systems (NAGIS), a 24-month period habitat project which seeks to address land administration and management issues as well as the issue of unplanned and unregulated settlements in Nasarawa State, is now completed for commissioning at Karu, at the border with Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
NAGIS Centre, constructed along Abuja-Keffi Highway at Karu, an area designed as the largest business district of the state because of the investment potentials that abound from the proximity of the area with the FCT, will centre Nasarawa Development Platform (NDP), an initiative of the partners involved in the habitat project: the Ministry of Lands and Urban Development (MLUD), Siraj Consulting Engineers, Aeroprecisa Limited, and GIS Transport. The centre is a hub that link all of Nasarawa’s land management and administration, stream in revenue from the sub-sector, as well as also make for development planning, according to Alhaji Ibrahim Usman Jibril, the NAGIS Project Manager, who also serves as Senior Special Assistant to Governor Umaru Tanko Al-Makura.
NAGIS seeks to regularize and put all of Nasarawa’s land use in a digital database to be housed at the Karu centre, and at the ministry’s headquarters in Lafia. It was awarded for execution to a consortium of firms under Siraj Consulting Engineers, in May 2012, at the cost of $16,876,561 (N2.7 billion). The project has three components: Digital Area Mapping (DAM), being executed by Aeroprecisa Limited; Nasarawa Geographic Information Services, undertaken by GIS Transport; and the planning of cadastral districts, by Pragmatic Solutions Consult Nigeria, Envicons, and National Environmental Design Associates, in what will give a detailed planning and development control to phase out the growth of slums in the state.
This road map, according to senior special assistance to the governor, Alhaji Ibranhim Usman Jibrin, is already leading Nasarawa – a gateway state to Abuja – into a new development strategy to sum up to the creation of a liveable city with facilities and layouts to serve as a twin city to the FCT. The habitat project, he said, will phase out the growing number of slums, particularly at the border with the FCT when good network of roads, water and power supply, drainage system, health facilities, schools, shopping centres, and general development begin to break ground in the first three towns of implementation: Karu, Keffi and Lafia.
Geographic Information Services (GIS), the first component of the project has seen the capturing of all land data including titles at the state ministry in Lafia, turning what they inherited from JM Technologies – a firm which first undertook NAGIS in the previous administration – into an information centre at against the facility which was nothing more than a hovel with old files litered on the ground. The firm has also fetched all mutilated land documents including the Intelligent Sheet from where all of Nasarawa’s land use can be traced, and reproduced them into 21st Century documents with computer backups.
This component has also seen the introduction of a new Certificate of Occupancy (CofO), for an ongoing recertification which has phased out the old and bogus certification where the governor’s signature appeared in not less than 16 places. In Nasarawa, as is with many states, land titles are a function of one’s connection with Government House, a development which saw only about 600 CsofO in the hands of privileged property owners in 17 years. But that is being reversed now, with this project which has seen hundreds with their land titles in only months of the introduction of the reforms.
In May of 2012, Aeropresica Limited commenced flying with light aircrafts fitted with cameras to capture the images, taking photos of every property on ground in the three first urban centres of Karu, Keffi and Lafia, to start with, and processing the images for the computerization of the state land data base, according to Roland Klaus, one of the managers of the partnership. This second project component is aimed at flying six major cities of the state, in all: Akwanga, Doma, Karu, Keffi, Lafia and Nasarawa at a standard resolution and the production of orthophoto maps.
The third component: the creation of cadastral districts is in its sevent month of implementation, with a team of some Nigeria’s leading town planners executing it. They have already produced an inception report on the project, which design shows that about 200 square metres of land is available for the planning which will create 10,000 plots out of six districts to run in Karu, at the border with Abuja.
Sonny Agassi, a Nigerian-Canadian who returned home to help drive the governor’s vision to success, described the totality of NAGIS as “a baby of my boss, the governor”, and said the centre at Karu stands out as a demonstration of an administration which came with a big dream.
“In this administration, the people and their yearning, as well as their support for change are the driving force. Then, when the dreams to meet their development aspiration, they do come real big, marking us in such a manner that the execution must come the way they are coming. We are out to tell our people that Lafia has got change”, Agassi said.
No comments:
Post a Comment