Lagos approves 15% discount on land use charge
“The Lagos State Government wednesday approved 15 per cent discount for all owners of properties in the state, which would pay their land use charge between now and April 14.”- This Day
The state government said it would inaugurate Ajah Flyover before May 29, revealing the plan to remove three more roundabouts in Lekki-Ajah corridor to ease vehicular movement.The state governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, disclosed the plan to remove three additional roundabouts at the State House, Alausa where he received the Managing Director of Chevron Nigeria, Mr. Jeffrey Ewing and other top management staff members of the oil giant.
Ewing visited the State House alongside the General Manager, Policy, Government and Public Affairs, Chevron Nigeria Limited, Mr. Esimaje Brikinn and General Manager, Deep Water, Chevron Nigeria Limited, Mr. Lanre Kalejaiye, among others.
However, in a statement by the Ministry of Finance yesterday, the state government said it had extended the discount window for the payment of land use charge till April 2017.
He noted that the discount window would allow Lagos residents to further enjoy the discount of 15 per cent, noting that prompt payment of land use charge would make the state excel and its residents enjoy laudable programmes.
He urged residents to desist from payment of tenement rate and ground rent as section 22 of the State Land Use Charge Law, warning that late payment or non-payment of land us charge on an annual basis “would attract accrued penalties and accumulation of arrears.”
It, also, urged all property owners in the state “to take advantage of the extended discount window and ensure payment is made on or before April 4 in order to encourage the government in the delivery of services to the general public.”
When visited by the managing director of Chevron Nigeria, Ambode disclosed the plan to remove three roundabouts along Lekki-Ajah axis from next week in order to solve the challenge of traffic congestion that had become intractable along the corridor.
He added that the action was in line with the resolve of government “to totally eliminate traffic in the axis. The affected roundabouts are Igbo Efon, Chevron and Third roundabouts.”
He explained that the state government had tried as much as possible “to improve on the business environment. The state government would continue to invest in security and infrastructure to make life comfortable for residents and investors.
“We have tried to improve services within the state. The area of operation of Chevron which is the Lekki axis is not left out. Few weeks back, we improved on the traffic management towards that axis. We believe the move would also enhance productivity of the people.”
He ascribed the resolve to remove three additional roundabouts along Lekki-Ajah axis to the impact of the elimination of the first set of roundabouts had, noting that the state government would begin eliminating three roundabouts next week.
“From next week, we will commence the elimination of additional three roundabouts in the axis most especially Chevron, Igbo Efon and Third Roundabout. We believe doing that will totally eliminate traffic in that axis and we hope to also open the Ajah Flyover before the end of May,” Ambode said.
He said the essence of any government “is to create the enabling environment for businesses to thrive,” assuring that he would continue to do his best to provide safe and sound environment.
Source: ThisDay
Ambode to deliver Oshodi-Airport before December
The governor equally pledged to compensate all stakeholders, whose buildings were affected during the reconstruction of Oshodi-Airport road, noting that the state government would pay property owners with valid documents soon.
He made the promise yesterday after inspecting Oshodi-Airport road, Oshodi transport, Agege Pen-Cinema flyover, Yaba Model College, Ayinke Maternal & Child Centre and Oworonshoki Lagoon reclamation alongside some top officials of the state.
After the inspection, the governor assured all residents of the state that the strategic projects – Airport road and Oshodi transport interchange – would be delivered by December 2018, asking them to show more understanding.
He explained that the need for quick completion of the road “has become imperative in view of its strategic location as an entry point into Lagos in particular and Nigeria in general. We just saw the progress of work being done on the Airport Road.
“I will like to appeal to all Lagos residents that they should bear with us. As much as possible, we will try to reduce the stress the reconstruction might generate by completing it and the Oshodi interchange by December 2018. This we hope to present to Lagos residents as Christmas gifts,” the governor said.
He, also, assured that all property owners with valid documents would be compensated soon, noting that the buildings that were affected during the reconstruction had been enumerated already and compensation would take off as soon as possible.
Ambode commended the Hitech Construction Company handling Pen-Cinema flyover, noting that with the pace of work, the flyover would be ready by December 2018.
He appealed to residents to bear with the government for the inconvenience being experienced as a result of the construction work, saying the project was designed to change the face of Lagos for good and improve on the economy.
At Oworonshoki, Ambode clarified that contrary to some reports in the media, the lagoon reclamation project was not a housing scheme but part of the overall programme for Lagos to emerge as the entertainment hub for Africa.
The governor explained that the project was designed “to transform the blighted area into major tourism, transportation, and entertainment hubs. 30 hectares land space has so far been reclaimed out of the 50 planned for the scheme.”
“While upon completion, the project would end the perennial flooding in the area, and would also accommodate boutiques hotels, event centers, cinema, clubs, bars, bus terminal, parking space with capacity for about 1000 vehicles, among others.”
At Yaba Model College, the governor said the intention of the state government “is to scale up infrastructure in public schools across the state, starting with commencement of massive rehabilitation of public schools.
“What we see is our new concept of what a model college should look like. That is why we have about 36 classrooms and nine laboratories in this complex alone. Because of the land space here, we do not really have a recreational facility
“But the ones we are building in Ojo and Shomolu have all the necessary recreation facilities that should actually go with a modern secondary school. The idea is that we want to increase the number of model colleges that we have.
“We also want to create a new template of how public secondary school should look like moving forward. This is our own template. This is the way we want to begin with it. We are doing three now. We will move forward next year to expand model colleges in the state.”
Credit: THISDAY
7 Principles to Develop Toughness and Build the Life You Want to Live
“Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles, and less than perfect conditions. So what? Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident, and more and more successful.” — Mark Victor Hansen
At our core, all of us are looking to develop and grow in the four components of wellness: mental, emotional, physical and spiritual. Each component impacts the other, which means they have an interdependent relationship. Each day, as we make strides and build upon our core, we get stronger, more confident and smarter. We get TOUGHER.
There are a lot of different definitions out there about what “tough” means. Far too often, it is given a negative connotation.Toughness is defined as, “strong and durable; not easily broken or cut; capable of great endurance; sturdy.” Think about that — capable of great endurance. Strong and durable. Aren’t those qualities you’re looking for as you develop into the woman or man you desire to be?
Mentally, we hope to become resolute, committed and confident in our approach to everyday living. Emotionally, while it’s always good to be vulnerable and kind, it’s equally as important to be courageous, faithful and hopeful in the face of fear. Spiritually, getting in touch with what makes us who we are isn’t easy. It takes time. It takes perseverance and endurance through challenging personal battles.
And physically, it’s important to develop our muscles and take good care of the vessel that enables us to navigate this journey called life. People who take excellent care of themselves are tough — they’re able to withstand life’s nicks, scrapes, bumps and bruises. They power through adversity and failures and on to victories.
I’ve spent a lot of time coaching and working with high-achievers and top-performing teams. I’ve led them in an effort to help develop the soft skills, emotional intelligence, identify strengths and weaknesses and enable them to breakthrough and build upon both successes and failures. I’ve found that tough people aren’t born that way — they start out as a proverbial slab of marble and are sculpted into a refined, powerful work of art.
“Life isn’t easy, but you never quit. Never. I may not have been the best, but I can always give my best. That’s how you demonstrate toughness.” — Jay Bilas
A fantastic book was written on the topic by Jay Bilas, a former college and pro basketball player and current analyst. The eponymous title, Toughness, explores the ways in which we can all grow, develop and become tougher to succeed. I decided to extract the most value I could from his book and my experience in coaching high-performers, and synthesized it here for you to understand.
I think you’ll find these 7 principles will change your life and are applicable to every one of us. I paraphrased some of Bilas’ points and illustrate how we can develop toughness and live life on our terms.
1. Work so Hard that You Have to Rest
The world’s most successful people preach about the value of meditation and getting a proper night’s sleep. We all have to rest. Our rest and daily reset should come after we’ve challenged ourselves and given every ounce of ourselves to working for our daily goals. Give your absolute best to every task in front of you. And give your best to your parents, husbands, wives and children, too.
Maximize your output in all of your opportunities and relationships.
2. Finish What You’ve Started
One of the most common threads in why some people don’t feel fulfilled in their personal and professional lives is very simple: they get started on something and fail to finish. Think about it — what’s the point in that? The defining characteristic of every high achiever is that they finish what they’ve started. They either accomplish a task, reach a goal, or abandon course for a wiser, better alternative.
3. Focus with Determination on the Task at Hand
Multi-tasking, while very appealing, DOESN’T WORK. Don’t believe me? Take this from the Cleveland Clinic:
The neuroscience is clear: We are wired to be mono-taskers. One study found that just 2.5 percent of people are able to multitask effectively. And when the rest of us attempt to do two complex activities simultaneously, it is simply an illusion.
You’re growing and getting tougher when you focus with every ounce of concentration on what you’re doing in that moment.
4. Encourage Yourself and Encourage Others Who Work With You
This is straight out of the Dale Carnegie (of How to Win Friends and Influence People fame) playbook: Encourage the people around you, celebrate their wins and congratulate them on their success. But guess what? Do the same thing for yourself! Positive thought encouragement enables us to power through adversity and challenging tasks, leading us to triumph and victory. When you are genuinely self-motivated and encouraging to others, you are a person that will keep moving forward. And everyone wants to be around that person.
“Failing doesn’t make you a failure. Failing makes you a competitor. Every competitor fails. If you lay it on the line, you will come up short at times. Failure is a part of competing, and embracing that fact is an important component of toughness. Tough people fail, but tough people are not failures. The only failures are those who give up, or give in.” — Jay Bilas
5. Be Alert to Change in Your Life — and Change all Around You
As John F. Kennedy once said, “Change is the law of life, and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” Change is unavoidable. It’s always coming for us, seeking us out whether we run, hide or embrace it. So be alert. Be alert to new opportunities. Be alert to ways you can build upon your successes, and likewise how to learn from your defeats.
6. Take Responsibility — Own Your Words and Actions
You want a surefire way to fail? Blame other people for your words and actions. Make excuses and refuse to take ownership. Deny responsibility and pass the buck to someone else. Those are the marks of a person that no one wants to work with. And if you’re seeking self-employment or entrepreneurship, you would be wise to correct this before you begin any prospective venture.
It starts with you. You will make tremendous strides in life, endure when others falter and continue growing when you accept responsibility in good times and bad. Forge ahead with a winner’s mindset. Winners are tough and always accountable for what they say and do.
7. Have One Fixed Objective— Get Better Every Day
If you’re struggling to determine what your passion, purpose, mission, definition of success or goals are, please let me remind you to start with this very simple objective: Get better every day. You have the time. Read one chapter in a book to learn a new skill. Jump rope for 10 minutes to increase your cardiovascular fitness. Spend 10 minutes in mindfulness meditation that allows you to think clearly about what’s most important in your life.
Write a small journal entry about your feelings, what moves you and what inspires you. All of these things take a little amount of time. All of them can be accomplished with minimal investment. And all of them will begin forming the compounding effect of helping you to improve and get better each day. Toughness is a prized quality among the most happy and successful people. Go on, you’re a lot tougher than you think.
You Can Do This
Join my newsletter and let me know if you’d like to work together as you build each day toward living the life you truly want. Let’s GO!
Why Survey plan is the most Essential Document for Land Search
1. The name of the owner of the land surveyed
2. The Address or description of the land surveyed
3. The size of the land surveyed
4. The drawn out portion of the land survey and mapped out on the survey plan document
5. The beacon numbers
6. The surveyor who drew up the survey plan and the date it was drawn up
7. A stamp showing the land is either free from Government acquisition or not.
A Survey Plan to me is the most important document that you must ask the Omonile, agent or family that intends to sell the land/property to you TO PRODUCE. This survey plan is what Omonile Lawyer would carry to the Land Bureau to do a geographical search or take our designated Registered Surveyor to the land to pick out the coordinates of the land to compare at at the Surveyor general’s office whether it is a good land or not.
No matter how cheap or beautiful or strategically located a land or property is, once that property has been discovered to be designated for Government use in future, there is no point going any further to purchase it. It will be a very foolish risk to attempt to defile the government and say nothing would happen, at least there are so many houses around or so many people have bought their own and nothing has happened.
Well for those who are conversant with the Lagos State Government’s no nonsense approach in maintaining the master plan of Lagos, once your property is within that area that has being designated for future Government use, no matter how long it may be, the plan must be carried out accordingly and your property will go down without any form of compensation because you failed to do the right thing by throwing caution to the wind. Examples include the 8 Lane Dual Carriage Way in Badagry that all the houses that were on that land were demolished, All the houses in Alimosho local Government that were near pipe lines, The ones in Idiroko, The houses in ijegun etc! In fact remind me of the ones you know.
Also in Lekki Ajah, it’s even worse because there are some areas that have been specially acquired by the government for over 20 years and it’s just now that the government is trying to recover its lands. These areas are what are known as COMMITTED LANDS. Once an area has been designated as Committed, it is the ultimate no go area to purchase a land. That’s where the government has committed those areas for Road expansions, future government estates or Government Reserved areas for major developments.
As long as that Property is designated as Committed or Under Government Acquisition, it is only the Government of the day that can revoke it and grant you the right to obtain good title for that land bought under Acquisition but if the government hasn’t given you the right to obtain a good title there, then those buying into those areas are buying at their own mega risk. Don’t for once look at the houses around there as your guide to mean the government cannot demolish those houses, you would be shocked that the owners have 4 or 5 houses and can do away with that one and poor people like you and i that have no mouth to fight government will just be rendered homeless because of our stubbornness to buy at all cost there.
Remember you know where the shoe pinches and how much you have in your pocket. This is 2014 going 2015. Plan to save more money than to throw it away foolishly. Wink
The other option from Government is that if they choose not to demolish your house because it is sited on a committed land, they will end up giving you the option to come and pay Ratification. Ratification in this sense means you’re going to pay Government the full price and taxes it has pre-determined to be the cost of that place and its non negotiable. So imagine you bought the land in 2005 for N2Million in a committed area and in 2010, you now have to pay ratification also known as “Rat” at the cost of N5Million to the Government. Does that make any financial sense to you? Imagine all the fears, rumours, prayers that you would be going through so that those caterpillars don’t come your way. If and when the government decides not to demolish, they now ask you to pay Ratification in equivalent of triple or quadruple the amount you bought it and remember the Omonile or Agent you bought it from would be nowhere to be found and if Found, would not in this life time refund or assist you in any way.
The summary is that the Survey Plan Search saves you alot of head ache at first before you even move ahead. And once you meet an Omonile or Agent who is extremely difficult with you in terms of not providing the survey plan on demand for search please my brothers and sisters, walk away quietly. The signs are already there for you to know you’re about to be scammed. A survey plan is a public document and not a private cheque book, so you shouldn’t be bamboozled by people who tell you that the owner doesn’t want to release it because of security reasons. Trust me there is no reason. As long as he is ready to sell, that is the first thing you get from them to know your status before proceeding.
NO MORE OMO ONILE
According to Mudashiru Obasa, the Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, a clean copy of the bill has been forwarded to the state Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode for his assent by Mr. Azeez Sanni, the acting Clerk of the House. This was done after the Bill had gone through the Third Reading and passed by a voice vote of all members present at plenary session.
What does this mean for landed property investors and owners?
No more forceful land take-over, entry by force, illegal occupying of property, illegal use of Law enforcement agents, encroaching with a weapon, sales of property without authority and professional misconduct among others. According to the provisions of the bill offenders can now face a maximum and minimum of 21 and 5 years imprisonment, there are also various fine impositions for such persons.
WHAT IS THE MEANING OF GAZETTE
BRIEF HISTORY OF A GAZETTE:
Before the Land-Use Act in 1978 was enacted, Traditional families who had so much land power under their control benefited from taking pleasure over all the rights given to them as land owners. Because of this mega-power they wielded with land, they gave out lands to individuals under a tenancy system for them to use the land either for fishing or farming while they still maintained control over the portion of the land given to the individual.
It wasn’t until the creation of Lagos Executive Development Board in the 1950s that individuals where now able to acquire land from the board directly in exchange for a sum of money instead of going to meet the traditional families to obtain land. This led to the Traditional Families now splitting their lands to keep some for the family use and others for sale to individuals directly to compete with the Lagos Executive Development.
This system still made the Traditional Families total top dogs in exercising exclusive rights with lands they chose to sell and the ones they chose to keep. This eventually led to the birth of land speculation in Nigeria because lands were very expensive to purchase and difficult to obtain. Because of this and other ancillary reasons, it finally led to the promulgation of the Land Use Decree on the 28th of March, 1978 that vested all lands in every state of the Federation under the control of the State Governors. People could now directly obtain land from the Governor and the Governor could allocate land to the individual or Companies inquiring about land and issue certificate of occupancy to these people it has allocated land to.
The land use act coupled with other laws made it possible for the Governor who was now the owner of all lands in the state to actually have the power to Acquire more lands Compulsorily for its own public purpose to provide Amenities for the greater good of the citizens. The Acquisition of land from the Family by the Governor who is now the custodian of all lands in the state was now empowered by the Land Use Act to take the general control and management of all URBAN land and any area designated as an Urban area by the Governor shall be published in an Official Government Record book known as the Gazette.
Any area, community or village the Governor designates as an Urban Area is an Acquired land and the rest of the land it has not Acquired may be given back to the community it was acquired from in the form of an Excision.
“An Excision means basically taking a part from a whole and that part that has been excised, will be recorded and documented in the official government gazette of that state.”
So for example if in 1981, Victoria Island, Ikoyi and Lekki were all part of one big Community joined together called Oniru and it had no separation to know which area is called ikoyi, lekki or V.I then and it has an approximate total area square meters estimate of 100,000 square meters and the Government is interested in that area and decides to take 70,000 square meters for its self for its own personal use as an Urban Area or public purpose, it will record this acquisition in the official government gazette and also record that the remaining 30,000 square meters has been left alone for the traditional family to have and do with it whatever it pleases it to do.
This my friends is the sweet relationship between a land under acquisition, an excision and gazette.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT DANGOTE ESTABLISHMENT
Recently the Central Bank of Nigeria’s governor was taken on a tour of the project by Dangote. Several media houses were in attendance.
Here is some of what we learned:
- Over $4 billion worth of equipment currently sits on the site.
- The project is slated to cost $14 billion (N2.8 trillion) of which Dangote is contributing $7 billion in equity.
- The project site is larger than Victoria Island. It is located on 2135 hectares of land in Epe, Lagos near the Lekki Free Zone
- It is the largest industrial complex in Africa
- Work goes on, on the site, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
- World Record 2.72 million accident free hours recorded on site, without a single lost time to injuries
- It is the largest single train grass roots refinery in the world with a processing capacity of 650,000 BPSD
- Dangote Group brought in the world’s #1, #2, and #5 sand dredgers to sand fill the site. 60% of the land being swampy. So far these dredgers have reclaimed 13 million m³ out of 30 million m³
- During construction, the project will employ over 25,000 Nigerians
- Dangote is investing over $7 billion (N1.4 trillion) in the project
- It is the largest single train refinery project on the planet
- When this project comes online, Nigeria will save a minimum of $10 billion a year on imports
- The Ammonia component of the plant will produce 2.8 million tonnes of Urea
- Dangote is producing its own electricity to power the plant and by so doing is saving 75% costs. Dangote produces electricity at a rate that is significantly cheaper than the Federal Government. Dangote’s cost is $400,000/MW, while Federal Government is $2,000,000/MW
- All the civil engineering is done by Nigerian companies
- The plant has an export value of $6 billion per annum, meaning Dangote’s efforts will increase the amount of foreign exchange in Nigeria’s foreign reserves by at least 40% of current value on a yearly basis
- Dangote said when this project comes on line, his friend Femi Otedola will save at least N26 per litre on millions of litres of diesel and petrol which his companies import annually. This savings will be passed on to the consumers and it will take a lot of pressure off the banks
- Billions of Naira were paid to acquire the land and to settle the existing communities. More money was also allocated and spent to relocate the existing communities
- This project will restore the dignity of Nigeria, a crude producing country that has for years gone abroad to meet its demand for refined products
- Refined products to be produced at the plant include but is not limited to propane, petrol, Jet Fuel, Diesel, Kerosene, Carbon Black, Polypropylene, Polyethylene
- The United States Trade and Development Agency is supporting this project with $997 million
Mocking Congress Won’t Make It Tech Literate
That was one of the biggest takeaways of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance on April 10 before both the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, and Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee to discuss data privacy and Russian disinformation. And this is especially so when ignorance on the political side allows the chairman and chief executive officer of Facebook to look like a helpful and earnest young’un who just wants senior citizens to be comfortable in the oh-so-confusing and complicated digital age.
Sadly, these illustrative headlines aren’t clickbait:
“‘Senator, I Think We Already Do’: Zuckerberg’s Interrogation Turns into Tech Support” (Vanity Fair)
“Lawmakers seem confused about what Facebook does — and how to fix it” (Vox)
“A Bunch of Senators Just Showed They Have No Idea How Facebook Works. They Want to Regulate It Anyway” (Reason)
Much of the conversation during the hearing was disappointing political theater, because the inquiry itself had a terrible structure. Design, in technology and procedure alike, can confer power to some and take it from others. So, what happens when you give a group of senators less than five minutes each to ask questions in the course of a single day and every reason to personally grandstand with little incentive to interrogate collaboratively and build upon one another’s concerns? Apart from outlier superstars, like California Senator Kamala Harris’s round of questioning — voilà — a preordained result with “no room for follow-ups, no chance for big discoveries and many frustratingly half-developed ideas.”
The scorecard has been well documented, and the record clearly reflects who did what and who should have done more. But what we should give further thought to are the powerful public reactions people felt while the drama unfolded and the conflicts they experienced about how to express them.
There has been plenty of powerful and insightful reporting and shared opinion on Zuckerberg’s testimony, and the credible sources I’ve been reading aren’t pulling punches in demanding accountability. Crucially, none have resorted to mockery.
It was a different story on Twitter, though, when people were reacting to the hearing in real time. There was serious debate over whether it’s appropriate for reporters to shame members of Congress for knowing so little about technology.
(I’m not going to insert tweets or hyperlinks to them. Yes, I know it’s a commonplace practice and a simple way of illustrating your point. But cherry-picking tweets risks distortion by taking them out of context — violating their contextual integrity. And doing so without asking the authors for permission threatens their privacy by obscurity. So I’m just going to contextualize the remarks expressed there. If you want to do your own fact-checking, you can search Twitter. In my opinion, the added transaction cost, small as it is, makes all the ethical difference.)
Team Civility
There are good reasons to support the folks who were upset over politicians not knowing enough about technology, but who insisted, nevertheless, that the concerns be expressed politely. Conversations about moral failings are themselves morally appraisable since they are first and foremost about people. Arguably, even if members of Congress deserve to be strongly rebuked for being unprepared civil servants, they still are worthy of being corrected in a manner that conveys a modicum of respect, because they aren’t just politicians, but human beings, too.
From this perspective, members of Congress are inherently fallible, just like the rest of us, and worthy of the modest protections that civil discourse offers. Indeed, it could be argued that during a time where trolling and closed-minded outrage is tearing the country apart, it’s imperative to treat the people we disagree with and are disappointed by with a level of decorum to avoid further degrading the public sphere.
This position also has practical support. Nobody likes to be mocked. And so, mocking politicians is a surefire way to give them an excuse to tune out and continue on with their bad behavior.
And let’s not forget that the hearing was taking place for the whole country to watch. Perhaps some of the seemingly ignorant remarks should be viewed in a more charitable way. Clearly, lots of people are unsure about aspects of how Facebook works. The company’s black-boxed algorithms, constantly shifting policies, and questionable terms of service keep so many of us in the dark. Perhaps getting Zuckerberg to publicly explain things that some of us find remedial actually helped improve other people’s digital literacy.
Legal Considerations
Focusing too intently on what politicians don’t know about technology can distract us from other important matters. Danielle Citron, the Morton & Sophia Macht professor of law at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law,, told me that, yes, mocking lawmakers for lacking technical expertise might underscore that they and their staff writing the questions are not knowledgeable enough to move the debate forward.
“On the other hand, there were some effective points raised, so ‘talking tech’ may be overrated. I was personally stunned at lawmakers’ demonstrated lack of ignorance of the law and legal concepts. Even Ted Cruz, who served as Texas solicitor general, had little to no understanding of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act,” said Citron. “He suggested that Section 230 was adopted in order to ensure that online services acted like neutral public fora. That is the opposite of what Congress was endeavoring to do — to encourage private actors to block or filter content. And lawmakers took Mark Zuckerberg to task for their own failure to write the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA) to cover 13 to 16-year-olds. I was not disappointed by their lack of tech savvy but, instead, their legal ignorance.”
The problem of politicians playing fast and loose with the law is just the tip of the iceberg when comes to regulating technology. The loss of institutions like the Office of Technology Assessment has been profound and can’t be made up for by expecting members of Congress to develop expertise in technology. Outputs generated by complex algorithms might very well be beyond the scope of scrutiny by human experts. And, as has been widely remarked, innovation moves quickly, while law is designed to be a slower institution, steeped in tradition and governed by careful deliberation. Outdated conceptions of technology limit the judicial imagination and persist through worn-out metaphors that negatively impact legal reasoning in matters increasingly important to us now, such as robots, cyberspace, and privacy.
The Limits of Politeness
But back to how we express our outrage. The alternative position, that members of Congress should be thoroughly lambasted, also has merits. For starters, members of Congress are public officials and arguably should be held to different standards of discourse than nonpublic figures, who aren’t responsible for matters relating to the public good in the same way. Perhaps discourse ethics is contextual and shouldn’t be applied in cookie-cutter fashion.
“[Politicians] have a duty … to be acquainted with the basic operations of the most powerful forces and institutions that are shaping our nation.”
Think about Alec Baldwin’s satirical depictions of the president on “Saturday Night Live.” You can be a fan without believing it’s acceptable to make fun of everyone. To treat Baldwin’s political commentary the same as presidential candidate Donald Trump mocking a reporter with a disability would be to commit the fallacy of false equivalence.
As a related example, I want to tell you about one of the most memorable experiences that I’ve had as a college professor. One day, an engineering major began his in-class criticism of an assigned article — which was written by a respected professional philosopher — by saying something like, “In this idiotic essay, the author claims…” I questioned whether this was an appropriate way to frame the rejoinder, asking “Wouldn’t it be better to convey your disagreement in a more congenial way, so that if the author were ever presented with your concerns, he would be inclined to take them seriously?”
The answer I received left me nearly speechless. The student explained that during critiques, his engineering professors would convey what he was doing wrong in harsh terms that depicted both the doer and deed in an unflattering light. Instead of finding this treatment insulting or wishing that the fault-finding was more delicately put, the student was inspired by the lack of filter. He more or less said that if the professors had blunted their views with nicer rhetoric, he wouldn’t be constantly sensitized to the gravity of mistakes in his field and would instead be more motivated to work hard to avoid making them. Since the stakes could amount to nothing less than life and death when he graduated, he was sincerely grateful.
The position that mockery is justified can be furthered bolstered by an additional consideration related to the high stakes of failing to regulate Facebook in the right way. Facebook has been repeatedly criticized for its conduct throughout the years, and yet its user base keeps growing. Indeed, Facebook’s stock rose during the hearing, which can be interpreted as a sign that Zuckerberg, not regulators, won the day. (Fortunately, Facebook’s campaign contributions “didn’t necessarily correlate to the hostility of questions asked by the legislators,” as this would be another reason to despair for democracy.)
Thus, it could be said that being polite runs the risk of failing to convey a level of moral outrage that’s appropriate to the situation. Using toned-down rhetoric risks becoming a complicit force that helps normalize the status quo and all of its problems.
I spoke with Shannon Vallor, the William J. Rewak, S.J. professor in the department of philosophy at Santa Clara University, about the situation, since she wrote the definitive book about the relation between technology and virtue.
Vallor thinks we shouldn’t have to resort to public shaming to get our representatives to fulfill their duties, but that it fits into a pattern as constructive channels of civic discourse are shutting down.
“Mockery is not the most constructive response to that failure; in an ideal community of virtuous citizens, we would reproach one another in a less cruel fashion. However, we must admit that our democracy has, in the last few decades, fallen further and further away from the ideals of civic virtue. Our representatives have become increasingly immune to reasoned public critique; many now avoid town hall meetings with their critics, foster public distrust of media voices, and generally fail to engage in any substantive discussion of how well or poorly Congress is doing its job.
“So, with so many of our representatives ignoring the norms and virtues of responsible leadership and civic discourse, it is perhaps understandable that the quality of criticism they receive becomes more crude, desperate, and less constructive.”
We need a new movement for constructive civic debate, Vallor said, and maybe a new kind of public servant as well.
“While we shouldn’t expect our elected representatives to all share a deep knowledge of technical and scientific matters, they all do have a duty to their constituents to be acquainted with the basic operations of the most powerful forces and institutions that are shaping our nation,” Vallor said.
“Especially when they are tasked with regulating those forces and institutions to the degree necessary to protect the public interest.”
Perhaps putting Zuckerberg in the hot seat allowed the U.S. version of democracy on trial more than Facebook. Zuckerberg says he won’t face the music overseas in front of a U.K. parliamentary committee, but what we saw this week raises difficult questions about our lawmakers and ourselves.
Adobe is Developing Photoshop for Your Voice
When Adobe Photoshop first debuted, it looked like magic. The ability to seamlessly alter photos gave graphic designers a life-changing tool, but it wasn’t long before users started to use the product for more nefarious purposes. As recently as last year, for example, a photo of NFL player Michael Bennett of the Seattle Seahawks appearing to be holding a burning flag in the team’s locker room went viral, even though it had merely been Photoshopped.
By now, Photoshop (and “Photoshopping,” it’s adapted verb version) has become shorthand for speaking about any manipulated photo. The way the term has woven itself into our everyday language demonstrates how widespread our understanding that images can be easily digitally manipulated has become. People are often willing to point out and accept that a photo has been altered. (Though, as the Bennett photo demonstrates, there are still exceptions to the rule, and many who are still fooled.)
What happens when Photoshop (or programs like it) becomes so advanced that it’s nearly impossible to spot a fake? What if there wasn’t a way to easily point out that something had been doctored or substantially altered because only a minority of people knew the manipulation was even possible? This is the case with Adobe VoCo, a program that allows users to edit voices — and not just the pitch or speed, but also what someone has said. Beyond just rearranging words in a voice recording, Adobe VoCo can make a person “say” something they never said at all.
Image: Adobe Creative Cloud/YouTube
Demonstrated in late 2016, the program is billed as “Photoshop for voice,” and part of the demonstration showed how to alter a voice recording of Keegan-Michael Key, of Key & Peele fame. It seamlessly shifted the order of words within the recording, in addition to adding new words to it.
In a matter of minutes, “I kissed my dogs and my wife” became “I kissed Jordan three times.”
The quality of the alteration, unlike more rudimentary methods of manually splicing vocal recordings, can make it hard to catch. The recording was changed merely by uploading the clip into VoCo, which then displayed the words being said under the vocal recording. All the user has to do is move words around or type in additional ones.
Predictably, the audience met the demo with cheers and applause, while Jordan Peele, who was emceeing the event, jokingly declared, “You’re a demon!”
Image: Adobe Creative Cloud/YouTube
VoCo takes in large amounts of voice data and breaks it into the distinct sounds that make up spoken language, collectively known as phonemes, before creating a voice model of whoever is recorded. If a word isn’t already in the recording, then the program will use these phonemes to create it from scratch.
There are numerous uses for such technology, most obviously in podcasting, given their increasing popularity over the past decade. From 2008 to 2015, the number of podcasts on iTunes rose by 50,000; over the same time period, listeners increased from 9 percent of the American public to 17 percent, according to MarTech, a marketing research website. Audio editing is a tedious process that could likely be made much easier with a program like VoCo. Software like this would also make it easier for amateurs to get into podcasting without needing extensive production experience or training.
As with many content-manipulation technologies, over the initial applause and adulation loom questions about the way such tech could easily be used to cause harm and spread fake news.
“One of the main fears of this kind of technology, where you can augment audio, is really about how can that be used in war,” says Joan Donovan, the media manipulation and platform accountability lead at the Data and Society Research Institute, which examines the social and cultural issues arising from data-centric and automated technologies.
“You can imagine in the midst of a breaking news event something like this being used to pretend there is a leak, that someone is making a death threat against a public figure, or that so-and-so has called for an invasion. There are all kinds of ways that this technology, if people don’t readily know it’s available, could be weaponized against the public,” Donovan says.
Consider something like War of the Worlds, Orson Welles’ infamous radio broadcast from 1938, which was so convincing that it caused some to panic, believing that an alien invasion was not fiction but, in fact, breaking news. Imagine Adobe VoCo taking the voice of a nation’s president and having them announce something equally as alarming over the airwaves.
Unlike Photoshop, programs such as Adobe VoCo aren’t widely known, which makes people more susceptible to them. If you described Adobe VoCo to a friend, perhaps they might say they could imagine it, but would they know it already exists? And that it’s practically on the market?
These kind of voice alterations could allow anyone to improve upon classic phishing campaigns—say, requesting someone’s password while pretending to be a family member or a boss. If you wanted to create a widespread false-information operation, the software could be used to spread fake audio clips. Or it could be used simply to harass people. Journalists regularly receive threatening emails — what if those were phone calls or voicemails that appeared to be from friends or acquaintances? Some of our more secure institutions, such as banks, use voice verification as a part of their security. Imagine if Donald Trump claimed the damning audio of him bragging to Billy Bush about sexually assaulting women had been digitally altered?
Researchers like Donovan have put together the digital tools needed to go back and see when, where, and how certain images have been manipulated. But she characterizes it as a losing game, because they’ll always lag behind the most recent technology. Widespread tools for identifying falsified speech are the next hill to climb.
Some biometric security companies believe they’re ready for this wave of technology, however, as more companies (including Google’s DeepMind audio-mimicking system WaveNet) move into this security space.
“The technology is new, but its underlying principles have been understood for some time,” Steven Murdoch, a cybersecurity researcher from University College London, told the BBC. “Biometric companies say their products would not be tricked by this because the things they are looking for are not the same things that humans look for when identifying people. But the only way to find out is to test them, and it will be some time before we know the answer.”
Adobe also seems well aware of the risks involved. The company has not yet released a beta of VoCo for download, and as of late 2017, it was still testing and developing the program. At the initial demo, Adobe’s presenter explained potentially using audio watermarks, a unique electronic identifier embedded in a recording and often used to identify who has ownership of copyright, to demonstrate whether an audio clip had been edited.
By now, Photoshop (and “Photoshopping,” it’s adapted verb version) has become shorthand for speaking about any manipulated photo. The way the term has woven itself into our everyday language demonstrates how widespread our understanding that images can be easily digitally manipulated has become. People are often willing to point out and accept that a photo has been altered. (Though, as the Bennett photo demonstrates, there are still exceptions to the rule, and many who are still fooled.)
What happens when Photoshop (or programs like it) becomes so advanced that it’s nearly impossible to spot a fake? What if there wasn’t a way to easily point out that something had been doctored or substantially altered because only a minority of people knew the manipulation was even possible? This is the case with Adobe VoCo, a program that allows users to edit voices — and not just the pitch or speed, but also what someone has said. Beyond just rearranging words in a voice recording, Adobe VoCo can make a person “say” something they never said at all.
Image: Adobe Creative Cloud/YouTube
Demonstrated in late 2016, the program is billed as “Photoshop for voice,” and part of the demonstration showed how to alter a voice recording of Keegan-Michael Key, of Key & Peele fame. It seamlessly shifted the order of words within the recording, in addition to adding new words to it.
In a matter of minutes, “I kissed my dogs and my wife” became “I kissed Jordan three times.”
The quality of the alteration, unlike more rudimentary methods of manually splicing vocal recordings, can make it hard to catch. The recording was changed merely by uploading the clip into VoCo, which then displayed the words being said under the vocal recording. All the user has to do is move words around or type in additional ones.
Predictably, the audience met the demo with cheers and applause, while Jordan Peele, who was emceeing the event, jokingly declared, “You’re a demon!”
Image: Adobe Creative Cloud/YouTube
VoCo takes in large amounts of voice data and breaks it into the distinct sounds that make up spoken language, collectively known as phonemes, before creating a voice model of whoever is recorded. If a word isn’t already in the recording, then the program will use these phonemes to create it from scratch.
There are numerous uses for such technology, most obviously in podcasting, given their increasing popularity over the past decade. From 2008 to 2015, the number of podcasts on iTunes rose by 50,000; over the same time period, listeners increased from 9 percent of the American public to 17 percent, according to MarTech, a marketing research website. Audio editing is a tedious process that could likely be made much easier with a program like VoCo. Software like this would also make it easier for amateurs to get into podcasting without needing extensive production experience or training.
As with many content-manipulation technologies, over the initial applause and adulation loom questions about the way such tech could easily be used to cause harm and spread fake news.
“One of the main fears of this kind of technology, where you can augment audio, is really about how can that be used in war,” says Joan Donovan, the media manipulation and platform accountability lead at the Data and Society Research Institute, which examines the social and cultural issues arising from data-centric and automated technologies.
“You can imagine in the midst of a breaking news event something like this being used to pretend there is a leak, that someone is making a death threat against a public figure, or that so-and-so has called for an invasion. There are all kinds of ways that this technology, if people don’t readily know it’s available, could be weaponized against the public,” Donovan says.
Consider something like War of the Worlds, Orson Welles’ infamous radio broadcast from 1938, which was so convincing that it caused some to panic, believing that an alien invasion was not fiction but, in fact, breaking news. Imagine Adobe VoCo taking the voice of a nation’s president and having them announce something equally as alarming over the airwaves.
Unlike Photoshop, programs such as Adobe VoCo aren’t widely known, which makes people more susceptible to them. If you described Adobe VoCo to a friend, perhaps they might say they could imagine it, but would they know it already exists? And that it’s practically on the market?
These kind of voice alterations could allow anyone to improve upon classic phishing campaigns—say, requesting someone’s password while pretending to be a family member or a boss. If you wanted to create a widespread false-information operation, the software could be used to spread fake audio clips. Or it could be used simply to harass people. Journalists regularly receive threatening emails — what if those were phone calls or voicemails that appeared to be from friends or acquaintances? Some of our more secure institutions, such as banks, use voice verification as a part of their security. Imagine if Donald Trump claimed the damning audio of him bragging to Billy Bush about sexually assaulting women had been digitally altered?
Researchers like Donovan have put together the digital tools needed to go back and see when, where, and how certain images have been manipulated. But she characterizes it as a losing game, because they’ll always lag behind the most recent technology. Widespread tools for identifying falsified speech are the next hill to climb.
Some biometric security companies believe they’re ready for this wave of technology, however, as more companies (including Google’s DeepMind audio-mimicking system WaveNet) move into this security space.
“The technology is new, but its underlying principles have been understood for some time,” Steven Murdoch, a cybersecurity researcher from University College London, told the BBC. “Biometric companies say their products would not be tricked by this because the things they are looking for are not the same things that humans look for when identifying people. But the only way to find out is to test them, and it will be some time before we know the answer.”
Adobe also seems well aware of the risks involved. The company has not yet released a beta of VoCo for download, and as of late 2017, it was still testing and developing the program. At the initial demo, Adobe’s presenter explained potentially using audio watermarks, a unique electronic identifier embedded in a recording and often used to identify who has ownership of copyright, to demonstrate whether an audio clip had been edited.
Building a Text Editor for a Digital-First Newsroom
If you’re like most people in America, you use a text editor nearly every day. Whether it’s your basic Apple Notes, or something more advanced like Google Docs, Microsoft Word or Medium, our text editors allow us to record and render our important thoughts and information, enabling us to tell stories in the most engaging ways.
But you might not have ever thought about how those text editors work under the hood. Every time you press a key, hundreds of lines of code may be executing to render your desired character on the page. Actions that seem small — such as dragging a selection over a few words of text or turning text into a heading — actually trigger lots of changes in the system underlying the program.
While you may not think about the code powering these complicated text-editing maneuvers, my team here at The New York Times thinks about it constantly. Our primary task is to create an ultra-customized story editor for the newsroom. Beyond the basics of being able to type and render content, this new story editor needs to combine the advanced features of Google Docs with the intuitive design focus of Medium, then add lots of features unique to the newsroom’s workflow.
For a number of years, The Times’s newsroom has used a legacy homegrown text editor that hasn’t quite served its many needs. While our older editor is intensely tailored to the newsroom’s production workflow, its UI leaves much to be desired: It heavily compartmentalizes that workflow, separating different parts of a story (e.g. text, photos, social media and copy-editing) into completely different parts of the app. Producing an article in this older editor therefore requires navigating through a lengthy series of unintuitive and visually unappealing tabs.
In addition to promoting a fragmented workflow for users, the legacy editor also causes a lot of pain on the engineering side. It relies on direct DOM manipulation to render everything in the editor, adding various HTML tags to signify the difference between deleted text, new text and comments. This means engineers on other teams then have to put the article through heavy tag cleanup before it can be published and rendered to the website, a process that is time-consuming and prone to mistakes.
As the newsroom evolves, we envisioned a new story editor that would visually bring the different components of stories inline, so that reporters and editors alike could see exactly what a story would look like before it publishes. Additionally, the new approach would ideally be more intuitive and flexible in its code implementation, avoiding many of the problems caused by the older editor.
With these two goals in mind, my team set out to build this new text editor, which we named Oak. After much research and months of prototyping, we opted to build it on the foundation of ProseMirror, a robust open-source JavaScript toolkit for building rich-text editors. ProseMirror takes a completely different approach than our old text editor did, representing the document using its own non-HTML tree-shaped data structure that describes the structure of the text in terms of paragraphs, headings, lists, links and more.
Unlike the output of our old editor, the output of a text editor built on ProseMirror can ultimately be rendered as a DOM tree, Markdown text or any other number of other formats that can express the concepts it encodes, making it very versatile and solving many of the problems we run into with our legacy text editor.
So how does ProseMirror work, exactly? Let’s jump into the technology behind it.
Everything is a Node
ProseMirror structures its main elements — paragraphs, headings, lists, images, etc. — as nodes. Many nodes can have child nodes — e.g., a heading_basic node can have child nodes including a heading1 node, a byline node, a timestamp node and image nodes. This leads to the tree-like structure I mentioned above.
The DOM would codify that sentence as a tree, like this:
In ProseMirror, however, the content of a paragraph is represented as a flat sequence of inline elements, each with its own set of styles:
There’s an advantage to this flat paragraph structure: ProseMirror keeps track of every node in terms of its numerical position. Because ProseMirror recognizes the italicized and bolded word “emphasis” in the example above as its own standalone node, it can represent the node’s position as simple character offsets rather than thinking about it as a location in a tree. The text editor can know, for example, that the word “emphasis” begins at position 63 in the document, which makes it easy to select, find and work with.
All of these nodes — paragraph nodes, heading nodes, image nodes, etc. — have certain features associated with them, including sizes, placeholders and draggability. In the case of some specific nodes like images or videos, they also must contain an ID so that media files can be found in the larger CMS environment. How does Oak know about all of these node features?
To tell Oak what a particular node is like, we create it with a “node spec,” a class that defines those custom behaviors or methods that the text editor needs to understand and properly work with the node. We then define a schema of all the nodes that exist in our editor and where each node is allowed to be placed in the overall document. (We wouldn’t, for example, want users placing embedded tweets inside of the header, so we disallow it in the schema.) In the schema, we list all the nodes that exist in the Oak environment and how they relate to each other.
export function nytBodySchemaSpec() {
const schemaSpec = {
nodes: {
doc: new DocSpec({ content: 'block+', marks: '_' }),
paragraph: new ParagraphSpec({ content: 'inline*', group: 'block', marks: '_' }),
heading1: new Heading1Spec({ content: 'inline*', group: 'block', marks: 'comment' }),
blockquote: new BlockquoteSpec({ content: 'inline*', group: 'block', marks: '_' }),
summary: new SummarySpec({ content: 'inline*', group: 'block', marks: 'comment' }),
header_timestamp: new HeaderTimestampSpec({ group: 'header-child-block', marks: 'comment' }),
...
},
marks:
link: new LinkSpec(),
em: new EmSpec(),
strong: new StrongSpec(),
comment: new CommentMarkSpec(),
},
};
}
Using this list of all the nodes that exist in the Oak environment and how they relate to each other, ProseMirror creates a model of the document at any given time. This model is an object, very similar to the JSON shown next to the example Oak article in the topmost illustration. As the user edits the article, this object is constantly being replaced with a new object that includes the edits, which ensures ProseMirror always knows what the document includes and therefore what to render on the page.
Speaking of which: Once ProseMirror knows how nodes fit together in a document tree, how does it know what those nodes look like or how to actually display them on the page? To map the ProseMirror state to the DOM, every node has a simple toDOM() method out of the box that converts the node to a basic DOM tag — for example, a Paragraph node’s toDOM() method would convert it to a <p> tag, while an Image node’s toDOM() method would convert it to an <img> tag. But because Oak needs customized nodes that do very specific things, our team leverages ProseMirror’s NodeView function to design a custom React component that renders the nodes in specific ways.
(Note: ProseMirror is framework-agnostic, and NodeViews can be created using any front-end framework or none at all; our team has just chosen to use React.)
Keeping track of text styling
If a node is created with a specific visual appearance that ProseMirror gets from its NodeView, how do additional user-added stylings like bold or italics work? That’s what marks are for. You might have noticed them up in the schema code block above.
Following the block where we declare all the nodes in the schema, we declare the types of marks each node is allowed to have. In Oak, we support certain marks for some nodes, and not for others — for instance, we allow italics and hyperlinks in small heading nodes, but neither in large heading nodes. Marks for a given node are then kept in that node’s object in ProseMirror’s state of the current document. We also use marks for our custom comment feature, which I’ll get to a little later in this post.
How do edits work under the hood?
In order to render an accurate version of the document at any given time and also track a version history, it’s critically important that we record virtually everything the user does to change the document — for example, pressing the letter “s” or the enter key, or inserting an image. ProseMirror calls each of these micro-changes a step.
To ensure that all parts of the app are in sync and showing the most recent data, the state of the document is immutable, meaning that updates to the state don’t happen by simply editing the existing data object. Instead, ProseMirror takes the old object, combines it with this new step object and arrives at a brand new state. (For those of you familiar with Flux concepts, this probably feels familiar.)
This flow both encourages cleaner code and also leaves a trail of updates, enabling some of the editor’s most important features, including version comparison. We track these steps and their order in our Redux store, making it easy for the user to roll back or roll forward changes to switch between versions and see the edits that different users have made:
Some of the Cool Features We’ve Built
The ProseMirror library is intentionally modular and extensible, which means it requires heavy customization to do anything at all. This was perfect for us because our goal was to build a text editor to fit the newsroom’s specific requirements. Some of the most interesting features our team has built include:
Track Changes
Our “track changes” feature, shown above, is arguably Oak’s most advanced and important. With newsroom articles involving a complex flow between reporters and their various editors, it’s important to be able to track what changes different users have made to the document and when. This feature relies heavily on the careful tracking of each transaction, storing each one in a database and then rendering them in the document as green text for additions and red strikeout text for deletions.
Custom Headers
Part of Oak’s purpose is to be a design-focused text editor, giving reporters and editors the ability to present visual journalism in the way that best fits any given story. To this aim, we’ve created custom header nodes including horizontal and vertical full-bleed images. These headers in Oak are each nodes with their own unique NodeViews and schemas that allow them to include bylines, timestamps, images and other nested nodes. For users, they mirror the headers that published articles can have on the reader-facing site, giving reporters and editors as close as possible a representation to what the article will look like when it’s published for the public on the actual New York Times website.
A few of Oak’s header options. From left to right: Basic header, Horizontal full-bleed header, Vertical full-bleed header.
Comments
Comments are an important part of the newsroom workflow — editors need to converse with reporters, asking questions and giving suggestions. In our legacy editor, users were forced to put their comments directly into the document alongside the article text, which often made the article look busy and were easy to miss. For Oak, our team created an intricate ProseMirror plugin that renders comments off to the right. Believe it or not, comments are actually a type of mark under the hood. It’s an annotation on text, like bold, italics or hyperlinks; the difference is just the display style.
In Oak, comments are a type of mark, but they’re displayed on the right side of the relevant text or node.
Oak has come a long way since its conception, and we’re excited to continue building new features for the many newsroom desks that are beginning to make the switch from our legacy editor. We’re planning to begin work soon on a collaborative editing feature that would allow more than one user to edit an article at the same time, which will radically improve the way reporters and editors work together.
Text editors are much more complex than many know. I consider it a privilege to be part of the Oak team, building a tool that, as a writer, I find fascinating and also so important for the functioning of one of the world’s largest and most influential newsrooms. Thank you to my managers, Tessa Ann Taylor and Joe Hart, and my team that’s been working on Oak since well before I arrived: Thomas Rhiel, Jeff Sisson, Will Dunning, Matthew Stake, Matthew Berkowitz, Dylan Nelson, Shilpa Kumar, Shayni Sood and Robinson Deckert. I am lucky to have such amazing teammates in making the Oak magic happen. Thank you.
Don't Be A Victim. Investigate Every Property Before You Buy Any Land This Year
Hi Everyone! 2017 and 2018 was great for so many reasons because I made people finally realize they have the power to determine how they buy property before throwing away their hard earned money. Personally i feel very very fulfilled that i did my best to help a lot of Nigerians search properties and recommend the ones that are valid and the ones that have so many hidden problems that by the time you purchase it, you end up having more headaches than when you previously didn't buy any land. I was doing my calculation yesterday and i realized i have turned down almost N165Million worth of properties that were advertised to be sold to intending purchasers that had so many hidden scruples that the agents and omoniles wont tell you till you commit your money and then its from frying pan to fire. smiley
For the avoidance of doubt for First Time Property/Land Buyers or New DestinyKing Property Viewers and Readers who don't know what a property search is, it means before you buy any land or property what so ever in any form or shape where ever, you have to know the validity of it.
Lagos in particular is so notorious when it comes to sale of property or land that have so many fraudulent defects surrounding that land/ property that you wont even know what has hit you. These set of people are known as the Omoniles, land grabbers or land touts.
Omoniles naturally should mean owners of the original land which includes the original family that truthfully inherited the property from their fore fathers that has passed down to them. But the real problem comes when there are so many members of the family that are divided in terms of claiming ownership of the lands and how the land truthfully devolved to them. Before you know it, a property that is meant to be shared by a family of 3 to claim ownership is now being contested by the brother in law, the aunt, the great grand uncle relatives etc and that's when they begin to employ touts going around to masquerade as the original owners with the right to sell and after you fall victim of their sweet tongues and coercion, you realize that you bought from the wrong family or the wrong set of people who have no right to sell the land to you and you would be confronted by the original owners when you have started building half way and forced to cough out another payment to the real owners or be thrown out of the land. Trust me this scourge is very very real and 65% of lands in Lagos have this problem one way or the other.
The other way your being deceived is by telling you the genuineness of the property comes from a set of documents. Those set of documents include either a survey plan, a deed of assignment, a certificate of occupancy, government allocation letter, government gazette or governors consent.
They will show you all manners of papers to make you believe them instantly and start pointing to different houses around there that has been built by one commissioner or one Minister or one big man and that their houses are still standing without any government wahala. What they want you to do is to instantly believe them and pay money to them immediately. One thing you can be rest assured is that, once you pay money to an Omonile, you will never ever ever get a refund of that money. Its gone and in some cases its in your front they will start sharing the money.
Don't ever ever fall for that trick. Always demand for what ever documents they have. I will point out the importance of each document to know the relevance of it and why it shouldn't be taken for granted.
1. Survey Plan:
This to me is the most important document From the start you must ask for from the omonile, agent or family that intends to sell the land/property to you. This survey plan is what i would carry to the Land Bureau to go and do a geographical search on first. No matter how cheap or beautiful or strategically located a land or property is, once that property has been discovered to be designated for Government use in future, there is no point going any further to purchase it. It will be a very foolish risk to attempt to defile the government and say nothing would happen, at least there are so many houses around or so many people have bought their own and nothing has happened.
Well for those who are conversant with Uncle Fashola's no nonsense approach in maintaining the master plan of Lagos, once your property is within that area that has being designated for Future Government use, no matter how long maybe its in the year 2023, the plan must be carried out accordingly and your property will go down without any form of compensation because you failed to do the right thing by throwing caution to the wind. Examples include the 8 Lane Dual Carriage Way in Badagry that all the houses that were on that land were demolished, All the houses in Alimosho local Government that were near pipe lines, The ones in Idiroko, The houses in ijegun etc! In fact remind me of the ones you know.
Also in Lekki Ajah, its even worse because there are some areas that have been specially acquired by the government for over 20 years and its just now that the government is trying to recover its lands. These areas is what is known as COMMITTED LANDS. Once an area has been designated as Committed, it is the ultimate no go area abeg. That's where they commit the area for Road expansion, future government estates or Government Reserved areas For Major Developments. As long as that Property is designated as Committed or under acquisition, it is only the Government of the day that can revoke it and anybody buying into those areas are buying at their own mega risk. Don't for once look at the houses around there as your guide to mean the government cannot demolish those houses, you would be shocked that the owners have 4 or 5 houses and can do away with that one and poor people like me and you that have no mouth to fight government will just be rendered homeless because of our stubbornness to buy at all cost there.
Remember you know where the shoe pinches and how much you have in your pocket. This is 2018. Plan to save more money than to throw it away foolishly. wink
The other option from Government is that if they choose not to demolish your house because it is sited on a committed land, they will end up giving you the option to come and pay Ratification. Ratification in this sense means your going to pay Government the full price and taxes it determines to be the cost of that place and its non negotiable. So imagine you bought the land in 2018 for N2Million in a committed area and in 2023, you now have to pay ratification also known as "Rat" at the cost of N5Million to the Government. Does that make any financial sense to you? Imagine all the fears, rumors, prayers that you would be going through so that those caterpillars don't come your way and when they decide not to demolish, they now ask you to pay Ratification, triple or quadruple the amount you bought it and remember the Omonile or Agent you bought it from is no where to be found and if Found, would not in this life time refund or assist you in any way.
Finally another advantage of the Survey Search is that if the land has been designated for Agricultural Purpose, you would know in advance. Its is mostly prevalent in Ikorodu, Badagry and Growing Rural Areas that are just cropping up. Buying into a place designated for Agric is a major no-no! Except you Want Your immediate neighbors to be Cows, Fisheries and probably Obasanjo's Chicken farmers! Unless it has been designated for Residential or Mixed Development Avoid it please.
The summary is that the Survey Plan Search saves you a lot of head ache at first before you even move ahead. And once you meet an Omonile or Agent who is extremely difficult with you in terms of not providing the survey plan on demand for search please my brothers and sisters, walk away quietly. The signs are already there for you to know your about to be scammed. A survey plan is a public document and not a private cheque book, so you shouldn't be bamboozled by people who tell you that the owner doesn't want to release it because of security reasons. Trust me there is no reason. As long as he is ready to sell, that is the first thing you get from them to know your status before proceeding.
2.The Deed of Assignment or Conveyance:
This is the second most important document you need to do a personal search. A deed of conveyance or assignment traces the history of how the property or land has reached the present owner till date. It relates all the information in respect of the true owners of the land before it was passed to Mr A and How MR A sold it to Mr B and How Mr B intend to sell it to you. With that document, you can trace in most respect the original families to find out if there is any dispute as to the ownership of the land how it has been transferred. It is extremely important to trace the original source of the land because its there you know if the land actually has been duly transferred to the present owner. It is here you get to know of if there is any family dispute and some families are still quarreling over the true ownership of the land. It is there you tend to get the family names to go and do a thorough search in court or Alausa to know of any lingering dispute. Its here you get to know the hanky panky the present owner intends to play when he begins to tell you rooster and bull stories so that you pay for the land immediately.
Never fall for this trick. Ask for a copy of the deed if they have one and hand it over to your lawyer for a through search on the family. To be honest this is the most difficult search of them all and it takes the special grace of God to make sure you come out unscathed.
Ways the present owner can deceive you includes:
1. Presenting a false person to Assume the identity of the Original family so as to pretend that he or she sold it to the family 20 years ago
2. Telling you that the family is non existent anymore or they have moved away from that vicinity
3. Telling you all the family members have died
4. Coercing you that you don't need to meet the family because since it has been sold to him, he is the rightful person to sell to you.
This number 4 is a bloody lie and there is a reason which i wont mention here why this particular reason shouldn't stand at all and i can only disclose that in confidence based on the legality of it and the possible back door approach that Alausa frowns upon especially when your perfecting your papers tomorrow.
Bottom line, the deed of assignment is a major search instrument to know the how, why and when of the property you buying and it is very very stressful. So either be prepared to do all the walking, CID/FBI investigations or give your property lawyer on your behalf.
I hope you now know why search is not cheap!!! They say Good soup na money kill am or Penny Wise pound foolish. Because once you fail to get the real identity of the true family owners, your money has been sunk into the whitest of all elephant projects you can dream of, so be more vigilant this 2010.
3. Certificate of Occupancy, Government Allocation, Governors Consent:
These 3 are the dream lands or properties you can buy from with no stress or wahala what so ever. Any property that has any of the 3 is a very Good property to buy and to search them in Alausa is very easy because the records are there. In most situations, i will encourage you to look for properties that have a Global C/O, Private Certificate of Occupancy, Government Allocation or Governors Consent. Its so easy to perfect your papers in Future and your most likely in Most situations going to get compensated from the Government in case anything goes wrong if they attempt to acquire it or query it.
The only problems i have seen is that most properties or lands with a C/O, Government consent or Government allocation letter are quite expensive because of the paper work that has been done thoroughly by the present seller and it almost eliminates omonile from the transaction in most cases. So because the owners know that they have correct papers, they market and sell their properties quite high too because they are selling you gold. But then again you need your lawyer to help you negotiate favorably to make sure the property becomes yours.
The second problem is the issue of fake C/Os, Government Allocation Letters and Governors Consent. In my experience i have seen more than enough fake documents and these agents or omoniles would be so bold enough to dare you to go and check it in Alausa. They will so brain wash you and brag about its validity that you might be tempted to take their word for it but when you decide to go and search it in Alausa, you will find out that it doesn't exist and when you go back to challenge them, you hear new stories and unbelievable song and dance stories that you would almost want to puke.
Always demand for the Document to do the search. Don't listen to their stories. If they go as far as saying they wont release the C/O or Governors consent due to security risks, ask them for the number alone and the rest will be investigated. Don't compromise and get hoodwinked. Its the way they get their bread and butter. You fall for the scam, your on your own.
4. Government Gazette:
This is a document that records and states the areas the government has willingly given to the family and community to sell and that the government will not acquire it for what so ever reason except it duly notifies the world. The major characteristics of a gazette on provides 2 things.
1. The Area e.g Ilupeju
2. The coordinates e.g the Beacon Numbers that separates where the Land given to the family starts and stops. This is Known as an Excision. That means in a whole portion of land lets say 10 PLOTS, Government has excised 4 to the family and has taken 6 plots for its own use. Those 4 Plots will now be documented in a book form known as a Gazette. Its the Coordinates you will get to know where the 4 plots start and ends. You can never know with a unclothed Eye!
Now the danger of the Gazette that i have seen in my experience is that people who see the gazette, jump up and down and accept it whole line and sinker and proceed to pay to the family because that area is listed in the gazette and they believe that area is free. That's very wrong and dangerous.
It is only an Alausa Surveyor that can come to that gazetted area, map out the coordinates and tell you precisely whether your property falls inside the gazette or not. I have seen places where people purchased the lands that are outside the gazetted excision and still believe they are inside the gazetted excision coordinates. I have seen lazy lawyers and surveyors who wont take that time and patience to verify this one particular issue. I have seen fake gazettes with fake coordinates and worst of all i have seen people pay hard earned cash for those places that are most certainly going to be demolished.
Never ever play with a Government Gazette. They know why they documented it for you to see and if you refuse to follow those rules, you will heavily dealt with.
Anyway i have decided to assist people more this year 2018 and i thank so many people that brought me back to Property News via emails and phone calls from around the world through words of encouragement and blessings when i wanted to quit due to the malicious things some of my clients were saying about me and to repay this gesture as my gift back to Destinyking Property News this 2018, i would do the following for every member of Destinyking Property News that wants to buy a property free. smiley
1. When you intend to get a property, after you discuss with the agent or family selling, get a copy of the survey plan to me and i will do the survey search in Alausa for you free to know whether you should proceed to stage 2 or to forget the whole property from the beginning to save you stress and wahala. Just scan a copy of the survey plan and send it to me at destinyconsult.dc@gmail.com or call me on 08153534173.
Introduce your self and please try and convince me the reason you need the property search because i sift through my mails to know who is a time waster, clown or someone that truely needs assistance. Leave your number so i can call to tell you the result and advice you on the next stage which would include visiting the place physically to ascertain the coordinates because i have seen situations where the Survey Plan given is different from the Coordinates of the Proposed Land for sale. So when it is time for Stage 2 to carry me out, abeg prepare my deregulation money for hand o! grin (Joking)
This offer is only Open to Lands in Lagos State Alone and doesnt extend to Mowe/ Ofada/ Ogun state because of the distance going to Abeokuta back and forth. Alausa is Easier for me because my Office is a stone throw in Ikeja so i can hop in 10 times a day to get my information without crying over it in terms of the distance and transportation cost.
One more thing please, respect the fact that even though i am offering a free service, i have the right to cancel it at anytime if i realise am being taken for a ride. Property Search is a very very difficult process and if you think i am lying, devote a full day to do all the walking around in Lagos Traffic and meeting all sorts of people trying to hoodwink you and see if you have the mental capacity to withstand the shock and value how much a search would really cost if you did it alone
So take advantage of me now before i change my mind! grin.
If all is clear and you understand it throughly, then Good luck this 2010 in acquiring your dream property and may God continue to replenish your pocket to actualize your dream home and me the strenght to waka the whole of Lagos on your behalf so that you would have a Property/ Land Scam - Free year.
Finally Remember that You are not offending anybody if you are taking all the necessary steps before you drop your money for any Property Transaction, Rather your safeguarding your hard earned Money. Many Have gotten their fingers burnt for failing to do what is required in a property purchase. Its not how long but how well. Do the due diligence step by step. The property is not running away, rather its your money that will run away if you don't take these steps!Those that i have assisted one way or the other on Destinyking Property News to do a search or acquire properties will tell you how extremely thorough i am.
One more thing. If you intend to buy a property in Addo/ Badore Ajah Estates, please dont waste my time and your time. 85% of those lands / Estates there are under government acquistion and are Committed Areas. Governmnent has Acquired over 300 Hectares of Land in that place and thats approximately almost 5000 plots.
Anyone who has bought there or is intending to buy there that falls within that Committed Area is just wasting his/her time living in fear of demolition or whatever the government decides to do in that place. Nobody in those committed Areas will be able to get their C/O and anyone telling you otherwise is lying. I will not entertain searches emanating from those areas anymore. I am tired of going to the Survey General's office and hearing the same thing that it is a problematic area. Buyers Beware.
This is the problem of not doing a proper search in an area before you rush and buy land. Learn from the mistake of others before you rush and join them in their own problem. Omonile will forever convince you that the place is safe but Omonile will never refund your money after you have been 419ed! Property Buying is the easiest 419 Nigerians Fall for daily that never ceases to amaze me. Please be safe and intelligent before you make your next purchase. Whether the land is going for N400,000 or N400Million, protect your money. You didnt steal it, you worked hard for it, so dont let some people steal it from you because you failed to look before you leaped!
Cheers
