Daily Watch – Oyo lands registry to go electronic, Delta expands Nigerian footprint

22nd August 2017

  • Oyo governor,  Abiola Ajumobi, has announced the introduction of the Electronic Certificate of Occupancy, in a bid to ditch the use of the paper-based Certificate of Occupancy. During the official launch of the new enumeration and assessment of properties policy in the state, the governor also announced the Homeowners Charter Policy, which would enable homeowners in the state to regularise their land documents. According to him, the e-C of O would have security features that make it more copy proof. Ajimobi said the HCP was created to enable homeowners in the state, who had yet to obtain title documents like survey and building plans, to do so without delay and at an affordable amount of ₦120,000. He assured the people that the process would be transparent and devoid of unnecessary bottlenecks.
  • A ₦701.9 billion Payment Assurance Fund earmarked to provide liquidity support for GenCos to pay for gas and increase electricity supply, has not been released five months after it was announced, the Daily Trust reports. The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, while berating the 11 DisCos for their poor energy bill payments at the 15th Power Sector Meeting in May 2017, said the fund saved the grid from crashing as the GenCos that couldn’t pay for gas to generate power. Details available indicate that the fund from the CBN, announced in March by Fashola, is for NBET to bridge GenCos’ liquidity issues from January 2017 to 2019 to ensure more gas supply and increased power generation. Fashola had told the paper in June 2017 that “the payment has commenced and that is why you see we are around 4,000MW now.” But the Permanent Secretary for Power, Louis Edozien, at the July sector meeting in Abuja confirmed the payments to GenCos for January and February while those for March and April were being processed.
  • US carrier, Delta, said Monday it will begin three weekly nonstop flights from Lagos Murtala Muhammad to New York’s JFK airport, with effect from March 25, 2018. The new addition would complement the existing four times a week nonstop service to Atlanta making it a daily service the airline would be offering from Lagos to its US hubs. Following the exit of another US carrier, United on Nigerian routes, Delta has been the only American airline operating to Nigeria. Arik Air, which was the only Nigerian carrier operating the route has stopped operations to the US in the wake of its operational slump and insolvency which saw AMCON taking over its management. The announcement by Delta comes as the airline plans to celebrate 10 years of service to Nigeria in December as the only carrier to offer nonstop service between Nigeria and the United States.
  • FirstNation Airways has rested its scheduled flight operations and will offer only charter services, for now, the Director-General of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, Capt. Muhtar Usman has said. Usman who disclosed this to journalists on Monday said the airline had been operating just one aircraft for over nine months. He said the airline has abandoned its Certificate of Airworthiness as a switch to scheduled operations for a charter service looms. FirstNation was recently fined ₦33.5 million for violating safety procedures and has been struggling with a depleted fleet.