Join our WhatsApp channel HERE for the latest Benue news and updates!
In what could become a game-changer for thousands of civil servants in Benue State, the Teaching Service Board (TSB) has sealed a working partnership with the Benue Geographic Information Service (BENGIS) to fast-track the issuance of Certificates of Occupancy (CofO) for teachers and other public workers who own land.
The Acting Executive Secretary of TSB, Rt. Hon. Bem Tseen, received the Director-General of BENGIS, Prof. Daniel Amine, and his team at the board’s headquarters in Makurdi where both agencies agreed to remove the bureaucratic bottlenecks that have frustrated civil servants for years. Under the new arrangement, qualified applicants are guaranteed their CofOs within one month of completing the process, with TSB serving as the direct link between its staff and the land agency.
Hon. Tseen described the collaboration as a practical expression of Governor Hyacinth Alia’s promise to simplify land documentation for ordinary Benue residents. “Many of our teachers have plots they bought decades ago but cannot build or use as collateral because they don’t have CofO. This partnership ends that suffering,” he said.
Prof. Amine confirmed that Governor Alia had already directed BENGIS to streamline the process and that civil servants can now access the service through affordable monthly salary deductions. “We are here to support, not to exploit,” he stressed.
During the visit, Hon. Tseen also launched his “Operations Self Dependence and Self Reliance” initiative aimed at empowering secondary school students with skills and discouraging encroachment on school lands, a program he said the new BENGIS partnership will further strengthen by securing titles for school properties.
Teachers across the state have welcomed the development with relief, with many describing the old CofO process as expensive, slow, and riddled with middlemen. If the one-month delivery promise holds, Benue civil servants may finally have something to smile about when it comes to turning their land papers from perpetual “file in progress” to proper Certificates of Occupancy.
