Maduka Nweke
The Nigerian Institution of Surveyors (NIS) has warned that quality survey management and lasting building structures will be imperiled if stricter control and accurate survey and other things are not checked. This will also result to monumental dangers to lives and property without full compliance with international best practices by the government and professional bodies.
The Chairman of NIS, Lagos branch, Mr. Adeleke Adesina, decried the widespread threat to professional survey standards and regulation of building safety control across the country by unscrupulous quacks who have continued to wreak havoc in the building industry.
Adesina stated this in Lagos while answering questions on the challenges and prevailing circumstances affecting professional practice by surveyors and its implication on the perennial building collapse in Nigeria.
According to him, it is a daunting task for NIS to create a safe environment and curtail rampant building collapse by regulating and monitoring standardisation of survey management processes.
Adeleke said: “We face challenges and tough times in curtailing the proliferation of quacks who have engaged in illegal survey practice and fleecing unsuspecting members of the public and building owners under the guise of providing cost-effective building support services, which is dubious and inimical to the NIS commitment to create technology-based solutions in survey standard, infrastructural and housing development.
He, however, commended the Lagos State government for its laudable and bold attempts on the regulation of building safety and ensuring the standardisation and implementation of best survey practice in the building industry.
Adeleke also cited the case of an unnamed quack whose nefarious activities are currently under investigation by the regulatory authorities, adding that the suspected fake surveyor would be charged and prosecuted in accordance with the provisions of the NIS constitution and violation of the applicable laws governing survey practice in Nigeria as part of measures to check the infiltration by non-professionals in the building industry.”