Dubai was a big dream as the South-East Asian city-state, Singapore. Anybody dreams. The application of the tools to make dreams happen is what tells between them and fantasy. Governor Umaru Tanko Al-Makura sourced the tool to make a big dream happen in rural Nasarawa State, when this, five years ago (November 24, 2011) he appointed Sonny Agassi to implement what would later become the flagship project for the fifth generation state. Today, this dream is also on its way to turning a largely slum atmosphere that is Nasarawa, into a global destination for cities culture in Africa.
Sonny Agassi is a Nigerian-Canadian, who resigned from Toronto, where he managed the city’s landscape as municipal officer, to return to his rural roots to help drive Al-Makura’s dream of converting this slum into a twin city to Abuja. He was appointed commissioner in charge of Lands and Urban Development, and has served in this capacity since then, to emerge the longest serving cabinet member. He is the fifth commissioner on the succession list in that ministry, since October 1999 when the state was carved out of the old Plateau; and has been sworn in three times between 2011 and last year when his boss won a re-election.
Agassi came in with a good background to drive this subsector towards removing Nasarawa from the reliance on the federally generated oil revenues. Within five years, he has turned this establishment into the equivalent of a “Petro-Dollar Ministry,” deploy three basic tools of Innovation, Technology, and Leadership.
The narrative of Agassi’s five years in the management of the lands subsector at the other side of Abuja’s border, is one of a story of a near hopeless situation transformed into a product only next to none. He inherited an atmosphere of zero staff morale; and an ongoing project to computerize lands administration and management which implementation was everything a scam because the firm that handled it simply pocketed the about N600 million award, just to deliver a power generating plant and nothing more, according to reports. The new government’s approval saw the unbundling of this project for award to a consortium of firms led by global business concern, Siraj Consulting Engineers in 2012. Coming from an environment where standards are everything for results, Agassi literally became a mad man on the job to achieve his targets, first digging deep his feet to have the bureaucracy produce all lands documents dating back to colonial era, for conversion into digital files for a data base which can now be accessed anywhere in the globe by simply logging on to the project’s sites.
Nasarawa Geographic Information Service (NAGIS), as this project is called, pooled the implementation of three major components at the initial stage of the unbundling, to include GIS, Mapping, and Cities Planning, the last of which saw the conceptualization of a liveable city with hilly landscape planned for development at the edge of Abuja, particularly sharing boundary with Mpape and the Aso Rock.
The first two components have already being launched at different times of execution, the first seeing the lifting of physical lands documents into digital files; and the second implemented after the state’s land size of 27,300 square kilometres was flown to capture the detailed landscape now processed into a digital technology called Orthophotos. Abuja, the only location within West Africa to flaunt a GIS project, does not have the quantum of this cutting edge technology deployed at NAGIS, compelling the FCTA to rely on google earth images of far back 2009, according to reports.
The technology deployed by the three GIS components, has centralized the computerized lands management into an engineering concept called Nasarawa Development Platform (NDP), the result of which has transformed Nasarawa from an agrarian society into a sophisticated one. The result is the lands re-certification which sees applicants with their CsofO in just 14 days of application; and thousands have had theirs since then, far marching the records of between 1999 and 2011 when predecessors of Al-Makura governed. Even more is Agassi’s accomplishment in generating profit from this implementation. The platform has completely changed the narrative in Internally Generated Revenue (IGRs), seen the hauling of big cash into government purse from a sector where an average of N30 million per annum was the benchmark. Now Agassi’s conservative target is N100 million per month, from just the initial deployment of the GIS component in lands certification. Numbers reported in the media shows that the state in 2007 earned N29.2 million; and N49.9 million in 2008; N41.3 million in 2009; N53.7 in 2010; and 34.8 million in 2011.
2012 when he commenced the implementation of this project, Agassi achieved a giant leap, to net N317.4 million, accounting for over 100 percent improvement. In 2013, when the project was barely a year in implementation, Agassi posted N448 million, with 2014 hauling in N608.6 million, and 2015 N534.2 million. Still two months to go, Agassi, last week posted N410.9 million collection from lands certification alone, with much of what is generated yet to be converted into cash collection.
We read the commissioner recently launched an e-payment platform that will see property owners doing their payments on their mobile phones at their comfort places without stepping into the NAGIS headquarters in Lafia, or the operations head office in Masaraba at the gateway into Abuja. This cutting edge technology has also strengthened transparency there.
A cities enthusiast, Agassi has been reported to have dreamt the creation of the twin city to Abuja, as the next destination of his innovative leadership in the sector. Gurku-Kabusu Hills City, this concept is one for gradual development in decades like Abuja, but it is sure to create another Maryland in Abuja, even by the start of its initial development of one of the 29 districts to happen soon. This is a city lying 13,000 hectares, far marching Paris which measures 10,539 hectares in size.
Written by Nina Kemi Olubode.
