From Mu’awuya Bala Idris, Katsina
The Katsina State Government has traced and retrieved landed properties worth over ₦10bn, about 38 years after the state was carved out of the defunct Kaduna State.
The General Manager of the Katsina State Assets Management Agency, Dr Lawal Aminu Bala, disclosed this while briefing journalists in Katsina on Thursday.
He said the recovered assets included 37 houses and parcels of land located in Abuja, Kaduna and Zaria, which belonged to Katsina State following the creation of the state in 1987.
According to Bala, the recovery followed a directive by the state government to trace all government-owned assets, leading to the inauguration of a committee chaired by the Chief of Staff to the Governor, Abdulkadir Mamma Nasir.
He explained that the committee obtained official documents detailing the asset and liability sharing formula between the old Kaduna State and Katsina State, which revealed that several properties due to Katsina had been illegally occupied by individuals, encroached upon by some federal government agencies or abandoned.
Bala said the committee worked closely with the Kaduna State Ministry of Lands and Survey to successfully retrieve the properties.
He added that some federal government agencies occupying about 15 hectares of land belonging to Katsina State in Abuja had agreed to pay compensation.
The agency’s boss vowed that efforts would continue to recover all state-owned properties, whether illegally taken by individuals or occupied by government institutions.
Bala also disclosed that arrangements had been concluded to recruit asset surveillance officers across the state’s 361 wards to protect government properties from vandalism and identify underutilised public assets.
He said coordinators would be appointed at the local government level to supervise the officers, while a state coordinator would be based at the agency’s headquarters to ensure effective coordination and monitoring.
