KANO DIRECTS LANDOWNERS TO RENEW C-OF-Os BY JANUARY 31
By January 31, 2025, landowners must renew their Certificates of Occupancy or risk having them revoked, according to a mandate from the Kano State government.
The directive was given by Abduljabbar Umar, the Commissioner of Land and Physical Planning, during a news conference on Wednesday.
From Kano State’s founding to the present, he urged all landowners to register or renew their holdings with the Ministry of Land and Physical Planning.
By the time the deadline passes, he claimed, all existing C-of-Os will be deemed void.
Umar stated, “If you may recall, on the 25th of November, 2024, specifically, during the re-commissioning of the Kano State Geographic Information System, KANGIS building, Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf, made an important announcement to the world when he officially flagged off the recertification exercise of all current Certificates of Occupancy (C of O) issued by the Kano State Government.
“He also called on all residents to take advantage to either register or renew their interest in landed properties across the State.
“I stand here before you today to reinforce the announcement earlier made by the Executive Governor, and accordingly call on all people holding interest in land across the State, to immediately proceed to the Ministry of Land and Physical Planning to register their properties.”
He said as part of this transformation, all current C-of-Os will be rendered invalid at the expiration of this exercise on the 31st of January, 2025.
“I wish to remind the general public that in this administration’s efforts to provide an avenue for obtaining land documents affordably and seamlessly, as well as secure and strengthen land titles in the state, the latest and state-of-the-art infrastructure has been provided at the KANGIS.
“This new system offers a host of critical benefits including: Providing accurate and reliable records through eliminating manual processes, thereby minimising errors, manipulation of land files and titles, and delays in processing transactions. This will also make land ownership verification and updates more straightforward,” he added.
He claims that because of the new certificates’ sophisticated security features, it is nearly difficult to fabricate them, protecting property rights and drastically lowering the number of criminal fraud cases.
Therefore, in order to protect our people’s investments and dreams, the commissioner asked all landowners in the state to start the process of recertifying their titles as soon as possible.