ALERT!!! Concerns Moment Lagos Govt Reveals Over 80% Of Lekki Buildings Have No Approval—-The Lagos State government has disclosed that over 80 percent of buildings in the Ibeju Lekki area of the state have no approval.
This disclosure was made by the Commissioner for Physical Planning and Urban Development, Dr Oluyinka Olumide, in an interview with journalists.
“Just last week Thursday and Friday, myself and the team were in the Ibeju Lekki and Epe axis and you would agree with me that anybody passing through that corridor would see a lot of estates marked. We went there, and I can tell you that from what we saw, over 80 per cent of them do not have approval,” he said.
“The procedure to get approval is first to get the planning information, as to what those areas have been zoned for. In this case, what we have is agricultural land, and people now go to their families to buy agricultural land. Of course, those lands would be sold because those families do not know the use such land would be put to.
“The next thing to do is the fence permit. If you missed the earlier information on not knowing the area zoning, at the point of getting the fence permit, you would be able to detect what the area is zoned for. After that, the layout permits a large expense of land follows.”
The commissioner noted that a layout permit cannot be obtained except if it is zoned for the purpose it was designed for.
“So, you can see all these layers, but people still go ahead to start advertising. Some have even gone to the extent of displaying the sizes they want to sell. Imagine someone in the diaspora who wants to send money without any knowledge. Then, no approval is eventually gotten. Even if they pass the assignment and the survey to them, we would not grant the individual permit, because that area is not zoned for that purpose,” Olumide explained.
Recently, the state government clamped down on illegal estate developments in the Epe corridor of the state.
During the exercise led by Olumide, erring estate developers were served notices and requested to come forward to the relevant authorities to perfect their documents.
He noted that under no circumstances should any developer go ahead and start the development of estates without obtaining layout approval, planning permit, and fencing permit as may be required.
The commissioner also warned property uptakers and buyers to be weary of investing in estates without approval.
“He explained that layout approval was required for proper arrangement of the estate to give room for appropriate services and infrastructure while planning permit addressed the planning requirements on individual plots in the estate.
“He urged property uptakers and buyers to be weary of investing in estates without approval to avoid needless embarrassment from government officials or risk of losing their property or investment to demolition as some of the estates springing up in the axis, especially those that migh be encroaching on committed lands, were not approvable.
“To avoid any ugly situation, he advised developers and buyers into estates to access the Planning Information service of the Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development, which would give adequate information on the approvable development in an area whilst giving details of the zoning arrangement and the hight approval order for a given location,” the Deputy Director of Public Affairs, Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development, Mukaila Sanusi, said in a statement.
