The raging debate over a controversial land use charge law in Nigeria’s commercial city took a confusing turn on Wednesday with fresh criticism directed the way of lawmakers who initially admitted that inserting ‘Alpha Beta,’ a private company into the law was a “mistake” but later recanted after realizing the implication of such an admission and said that it was a ‘mirage.’
“It was not just an error but sheer inadvertence,” Tunde Braimoh, chairman, Lagos House of Assembly Committee on Information told BusinessDay, adding that actions were being taken to correct the error.
But Braimoh sent another message to BusinessDay yesterday evening which read;
“Rising from a meeting with the bureaucratic legal draughtsmen now, it was discovered that the inclusion of the name Alpha beta as possible consultants is a mirage to the government. It is neither contained in the copy of the Governor or of the house of assembly. In all, I’ll appeal we await the release of the clean and clear gazetted copy which will be expeditiously made available to clarify all doubts.”
However, critics say whether mistake or a mirage, it is “unpardonable and embarrassing,” questioning how the lawmakers would not know the content of an Act that made it through three separate readings and was signed into law by the governor to the extent that they would issue two contradicting statements on it within an hour.
“It creates a poor impression of the lawmakers,” said Festus Keyamo, a Nigerian lawyer and human rights activist.
“A bill goes through three readings before it is passed,” the 48-year old said, questioning how such an error flew under the radar of proof readers.
In the earlier message sent to BusinessDay, Braimoh had to tried to explain that the Act is not yet final despite the fact it many Lagos residents have already started receiving notice of enforcement. He claimed the Act had not made it to the gazetting stage, casting clouds over how a bill already labelled an Act and is being acted upon as one, had not even scaled through the third stage of the 11 stages required for a bill to become law.
“The process of promulgating the new law is not complete until gazetting, when the official copy will be available and the law properly cited,” Braimoh said.
The correct position will be reflected at that stage, according to Braimoh. “The process of gazetting itself is being expedited in view of these issues,” he said.
There are 11 stages a state bill must follow before it is signed by the governor and becomes law. The first stage is originating the bill before it is subject to an initial review (stage 2) after which it makes it to the gazetting stage.
The gazetting stage is when members of the public are given a public notice that a bill is being considered.
After this stage, the bill goes through first and second reading before making it to the committee stage for deliberations.
The committee’s report comes next, after which there is a third reading. At the next stage, a clean copy of the bill is presented and signed by the clerk of the house.
The concurrence stage, when the lawmakers give it a nod, comes before the final stage when the governor signs it.
The new Land Use Act is already being acted upon as a law, with changes reflected in invoices delivered to Lagos land users.
The Lagos House of Assembly is reported to have passed the Land Use Charge Bill 2017 on Monday January 29.
Indignation has festered among ‘Lagosians’ since receiving their land use charges that reflect a four hundred fold increase from accustomed charges.
It got worse when a private company named Alphabeta was specifically stated in the law as the sole executing agent of the new land charges.
In an article on March 6, BusinessDay profiled Alphabeta, which has acted as a revenue mobilization firm for the Lagos State Government since the time of former governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu (1999-2007).
It is understood that this is not the first time a private company is inserted into a Lagos state law, people with knowledge of the matter told BusinessDay.
Visionscape, a Duibai-based environmental utility firm, was also allegedly written into the state’s environmental law last year.
Two phone calls to Alphabeta and Visionscape went unanswered.
The Lagos state environmental law was not readily downloadable on the Lagos state website, Wednesday to confirm if Visionscape is actually mentioned in the bill. Two lawyers however confirmed the said company’s inclusion in the environmental law.
Braimoh of the Lagos House of Assembly Committee on Information said Alpha Beta would be deleted from the law within three weeks before Governor Akinwunmi Ambode would have the permission to sign the final copy into law.
“We will remove it within the next three weeks and forward the clean bill to the governor for assent,” he said. “It is after then that the law will be gazetted and people can be able to cite it.”
The Lawmaker said those responsible for the controversial insertion have apologised, but accepted responsibility for participating in pushing it forward.
“Although the bill is an executive bill, it is our job as lawmakers to vet it properly before passing it,” he said. “On this note, I accepted my own share of responsibility in the mistake.”
The specific mention of Alpha Beta, analysts say, gives the company an edge over all other companies that may want to tap into the lucrative business opportunities that would be generated by the land use charge.
The land use charge will generate billions in revenues for Lagos state and consequently Alpha Beta.
One person familiar with the matter twitting with the handle @_Kpek said the very mention of Alphabeta in the law made it “an incurably bad Law and ultra vires,” backing his making his claim through a judicial precedent that involved one E.A Lakanmi and his daughter Kikelomo, in the then Western region.
Their names were inserted in the law, but the Supreme Court took a rather dim view of the sort of Law that would name individuals rather than being for the generality of the populace- calling such laws *ad hominem* legislation – which simply means – laws directed against individuals.
The apex court would go on to hold that any law that purports to apply only to or for specific individuals is an incurably bad Law and ultra vires the Constitutional power to make laws outside of the Government’s law-making powers.
“This is still the position under the current (1999) constitution, so really this Law is a dead-man walking,” the person said.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) has urged that the new law be suspended, as it is capable of “turning Lagos State into a toxic environment and living-hell for residents.”
There has been outrage across many parts of Nigeria’s economic hub where invoices for the new Lagos state government property tax have been delivered.
Depending on whether residential or commercial, the new land use charges go as high as 0.78 percent and is charged on a government determined market value of the asset with no recourse to independent valuation.
BusinessDay investigation shows that the percentage rate charged on the high end U.K. property market (where Lagos state largely copied the tax from) comes to around 0.32 percent, where residents enjoy top notch government-provided infrastructure.
An apartment worth two million pounds in the U.K. attracts some 60,000 pound annual land use charge. UK Property values (used to calculate the charges) were last reviewed in 1991. The Lagos land use charge is subject to review every 5 years.
“A lot of reliefs have been built into the law but many people are confusing arrears with the actual figures. If you see those figures, ask whether it is for one year or arrears of several years of non-payment.
“The humongous figures that are being bandied around particularly in the social media relate to the arrears of many years of non-payment which are computed together,” the Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Kehinde Bamigbetan, said Wednesday.
LOLADE AKINMURELE, JOSHUA BASSEY
