Bit by bit, Lagos State government appears to be yielding to pressure from mounting concerns and agitation against its Land Use Charge Law which has dominated every economic and even political discourse in the state in the last two weeks.
Kehinde Bamigbetan, the state’s commissioner for information, assured at the weekend during an interactive session with property and finance journalists, that “there is opportunity for dialogue; we are ready to review the law but on a case by case basis”.
Earlier at a ‘Lagos Means Business’ forum, the state governor, Akinwumi Ambode, had assured Lagosians that the state government was open to dialogue on the law. This was corroborated by Akinyemi Ashade, the state’s commissioner for finance at an interview with journalists.
The new land use charge has been enmeshed in controversy since it was signed into law by the state governor on February 8. Though the state government insists it is progressive and innovative, the citizens say the law is not only punitive, but also insensitive and inconsiderate and must be resisted.
Besides the citizens who see themselves as major victims of the provisions of the law, the organised private sector (OPS) is vehement in its opposition to the law. Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA) and the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) are at the forefront of this opposition. The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Lagos Branch, is planning a protest march against the law unless the government reverses itself.
NECA is of the view that “basing the annual land use charge rate on the market value of a property is an inequitable form of taxation as the owner of the property is not, as a matter of fact, receiving the market value of the property on an annual basis.
But Bamigbetan contended that a good number of people rising against the law has not taken out time to look critically at what the law says as regards the charge on the house in which they live or do their business.
“A residential property owner who lives in the property as owner-occupier with a market value of N15 million will be paying just N6,840 per annum because the charge rate on the property is on N9 million and not N15 million because he has been given 40 percent discount on the market value”, he said, insisting that “many property owners might not know that their charge is as low as this”
The commissioner appealed to Lagosians to co-operate with the government, saying that government needed the tax because it did not want to continue to mortgage the future of the state by financing infrastructure development through bonds which it had raised twice.
“It is our plan to build a city of Lagos that could be benchmarked to major world cities such as Tokyo, Paris, London and Dubai which boast the best of infrastructure enjoyed by its citizens”, he disclosed.
CHUKA UROKO
