80% of buildings in Lekki have no government approval, says Lagos State Govt

“We went there, and I can tell you that from what we saw,
over 80 percent of them do not have approval.

“The procedure to get approval is first to get the planning
information, as to what those areas have been zoned for. In this case, what we
have is agricultural land, and people now go to their families to buy
agricultural land.

“Of course, those lands would be sold because those families
do not know the use such land would be put to.

“The next thing to do is the fence permit. If you missed the
earlier information on not knowing the area zoning, at the point of getting the
fence permit, you would be able to detect what the area is zoned for. After
that, the layout permits a large expanse of land.

“So, you can see all these layers. But people still go ahead
to start advertising. Some have even gone to the extent of displaying the sizes
they want to sell. Imagine someone in the diaspora who wants to send money
without any knowledge.

“Then, no approval is eventually gotten. Even if they pass
the assignment and the survey to them, we would not grant the individual
permit, because that area is not zoned for that purpose.”

On Sunday, Wahab said owners of recently demolished property
in Maryland had been served notices since 2021.

“We are not just doing demolitions. The law allows us to
remove encumbrances on the right of way of the drainage channels,” Wahab said
on Channels Television.