The economic policy embarked upon by the Federal Government, especially, the shift from the dependency on oil to agriculture and exploration of mineral resources is said to have provided an enormous opportunities for practising surveyors in Nigeria.
At their gathering recently, the Association of Private Practising Surveyors in Nigeria (APPSN), while identifying surveying as the bedrock of sustainable development programme in any society, noted that meaningful development must as a matter of necessity, have its roots in surveying.
Chairman of the association, Mr Odetunmibi Olufemi, at the annual workshop of the APPSN, Lagos State branch, held at the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), with the theme, ‘New Nigeria: The Roles, Right and Responsibility of Surveyors in National Re-Birth,’ ascribed the frequent, constant and often collapse of various infrastructure across the country to not having the right foundation.
According to him, the nation must realise that surveyors are better equipped to ensure that right foundation are put in place for all aspects of national development.
He therefore, called on private practising surveyors to continuously engage in training and development programmes in order to enhance competence and high professional standards.
Chairman Nigerian Institution of Surveyors, Lagos State branch, Mr Gbenga Alara, also charged all registered members of the association to live by the ethics of the profession.
Alara who is also a fellow of the institution, said that the workshop, aside being a fulfilment of mandatory professional requirements and responsibility among others, was also aimed at serving as a forum for reminding practitioners of the need to maintain decorum and high professional ethics among members.
However, the guest speaker at the occasion, Chief Yemi Soladoye, a fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Arbitration, appealed to surveyors to expand the horizon of practise beyond guiding construction and development projects or determination of precise location of roads or buildings and proper depths for foundations.
Rather he sees the role of surveyors as nation builders who provide price guidance and risk classification on land and the environment.
He admonished all registered professional not to see their job as just overseeing the quantitative and metric aspects of a project, adding that the surveyors’ job should not end on approval of survey plan, pointing out that they have a responsibility to resolve the issue of fake Certificate of Occupancy (C of Os).
He berated practising surveyors for indicating their responsibilities to the quacks, who he said are always on ground, while “they just sit in their offices and signing documents for the quacks.
“Instead of surveyors to employ quacks, the latter are now inadvertently employing the services of the former,” he said, adding that it is time the practitioners stand up to their responsibilities.
Soladoye also urged surveyors to tap into economic reconstruction embarked upon by the Federal Government, adding that the paradigm shift from oil to agriculture and solid mineral resources.
“The new trend has to deal with land, and surveyors are in best position to seize the initiative for individual prosperity and collective growth of the profession,” he counselled.
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