Nyesom Wike, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, has approved the cancellation of 485 land documents in Abuja after they failed to meet verification standards set by the authorities.
After a thorough investigation by the Department of Land Administration and the Abuja Geographic Information Systems, the impacted papers were declared invalid.
The documents failed authenticity tests, according to officials, and many of them were found to be fraudulent.
Authorities verified that the erroneous applications had been deleted from the regularization database in a public notice published by the Federal Capital Territory Administration on Monday and designated as Batch I.
Applicants who had submitted Area Council land documents for validation were explicitly targeted by the notice.
“This is to inform the general public, particularly applicants who submitted Area Council land documents for regularization, that the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory has approved the nullification or cancellation of applications that failed the necessary official checks for genuineness and have been confirmed to be fake,” the notice read.
The canceled documents include a number of layouts and Area Councils. Ushafa Village Expansion Scheme, Ushafa Extension, and Dawaki Extension 1 are among the Bwari Area Council’s affected areas.
Kurudu-Jikwoyi Relocation, Kurudu Commercial, Karu Village Extension, Nyanya Phase IV Extension, Jikwoyi Residential, Sabon Lugbe, and Lugbe I Extension are among the districts in the Abuja Municipal Area Council that are affected.
The Kuje Area Council’s Kuchiyako One layout was included in the list of impacted regions.
Among those impacted are the Ministry of Justice Staff Multi-purpose Cooperative Society and the Redeemed Christian Church of God.
According to Nigerian law, the Federal Government owns all of the land in the Federal Capital Territory. Land titles, including Certificates of Occupancy, must be formalized by AGIS and handled through the FCT Minister’s office.
The most recent move coincides with ongoing land administration changes that the FCTA started to address long-standing issues, such as reportedly fabricated documentation, multiple allocations, and irregular awards from certain Area Councils.
The cancellations are a component of a larger regularization process that has been going on for some months.
The FCTA revealed last year that only 8,287 of the 261,914 Area Council land documents submitted between 2006 and 2023 had been examined, setting the stage for the revisions.
There are still 253,627 pending land records in the database, with the 8,287 reviewed documents accounting for only 3.2% of all submissions.
FCDA officials noted that 96.8% of submissions were still awaiting clearance, acknowledging that progress had been sluggish over the years.
