The Adamawa State Government has stepped up efforts to curtail land racketeering in the state.
Getting a land for building especially in Yola and urban centers of the state has long been a nightmare for many, as plots of land are often sold to one or more other buyers.
The situation has forced many innocent buyers to engage in unending war over land ownership when they should be putting up their buildings.
The Commissioner of Land and Survey, Chief Joan Sahma who spoke on the matter on Wednesday, said he was appointed with a brief to tackle the problem and he has done much in that direction.
The commissioner gave some details to members of the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Adamawa Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ, who paid him a visit.
He said, “The issue of duplication of land ownership is being radically addressed. The governor has given me full powers to bring all land racketeers to order. Only this past month, we picked up a legal practitioner; a lawyer for that matter! We found him cloning our files. I said this is the type of people we must stop.
“So many of such people are now in jail. This is what the governor insist we must do, to sanitize the system and make land available to land seekers who can acquire land and be sure that the land is truly their own.”
According to him, the government is similarly reforming the process for resolution of genuine disagreements.
“We have constituted a unit for conflict resolution. We advise people to withdraw their cases from courts because it’s not court that gave them land. We want to settle land issues amicably without recourse to court prosecution,” he added.
