Nigeria’s largest alliance of businesses and employers, NECA has presented incontrovertible facts showing that land use charge in the country’s commercial capital has gone up by up to one thousand per cent in some cases despite claims to the contrary by the Lagos state government.
In a statement likely to add more flame to the raging anger in Lagos, Larry Ettah and Olusegun Oshinowo, President and Director General respectively of the Employers Consultative Alliance who called the new land use charge punitive and with potential to further incapacitate and impoverish residents supported their position by providing members of the public the copy of the land use invoice for 2017 and 2018 sent to a particular company by the state government.
The invoice showed that while the company paid a land use charge of only N420,626.52 last year on the basis of a property valuation of N106,758,000, the same company has now been directed to pay a hefty charge of N5,804,623 upon a bogus valuation of N162,762,600 carried out by the state government.
According to NECA, “the facts as presented above are not unique to this organization but representative of the various demand notices that the Lagos state government has sent out to residents of Lagos.
“As a business membership organization, we have in our records that demand notices that have been received by not less than one hundred companies in Lagos state, indicating an increase of not less than 500% of the rate paid in 2017.”
In addition, NECA said, “the alleged 40% discount of market value by government is not true as per the above land use charge demand notice.
The business alliance said the position of the state government that it raised the charge sharply because there had been no review in rates since 2002 was both inciting and disingenuous.
According to NECA, “it is government’s negligence not to have reviewed the land use charge every five y3ears as stipulated in the act. It, therefore, runs against rationality for government to suddenly wake up and decide to punish residents for its negligence of time past.”
