The Kwara State Governor, Dr. Abdulfatah Ahmed, on Wednesday, signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on land administration with EcoBank and Southgate Technologies Consortium.

Speaking during the ceremony at Government House, Ilorin, Governor Ahmed said the digitisation of land administration was an e-governance initiative meant to introduce efficiency into land administration, create optimal utilisation of wealth and effective deployment of goods and services in the state.

The Governor said the reform is a giant step towards efficiency in deployment of goods and services to create maximum impact on majority of people through the deployment of technology.

He said the MOU would lead to an improvement in the quality of service delivery, shorten turnaround time and maintain consistency in services.

The Governor stated that the digitisation of land administration in the Kwara State would bring about an increase in the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) with an estimated annual revenue on lands administration above #5billion, reduce fraud and improve ease of doing business.

Governor Ahmed added that it would improve public perception of state bureaucracy and strengthen institutional capacity as well as improve the overall performance of public service.

The PPP has a model of Design-Build-Finance-Maintain & Transfer (DBF-MT) with a tenor of five years.

The Governor noted that the state had not taken advantage of technology to optimise the way and manner revenue are generated saying there was the need to leap away from a crude oil-driven economy to a more efficient one by taking advantage of all assets that are available and translating them into wealth creation.

"Our economic growth in this country is tied to Oil, and we must begin to move away from that area because we are heavily reliant on the centrally allocated funds garnered from the sales of crude oil. The only available way is to improve efficiency by taking advantage of the platform created by technology", he said.

In his remarks, the Director-General of KP3, Mr. Yomi Ogunsola said the government had to commence with land reforms to enable the state rank among the best in Ease of Doing Business in the country.

•Photo shows, L-R; Chief of Staff, Government House, Ilorin, Alhaji Yusuf Abdulwahab, Kwara State Governor, Dr. Abdulfatah Ahmed, Director General, Kwara State Public-Private Partnership, Yomi Ogunshola, Group Head, Cash Management and Client Access, Ecobank Ltd. Isaac Kamuta and Chairman, Kwara State Internal Revenue Service, Dr. Murtala Awodun during signing of Kwara State Lands admin secretariat project at Government House, Ilorin...Wednesday.

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