By: Kenny Folarin, Anyebe Victor
The President, Nigerian Institute of Architects (NIA), Arch.Enyi Ben-Eboh has exonerated the institute from recent cases of building collapses witnessed across the country.
Eboh while speaking in Abuja at the NIA 2022 Strategic Retreat noted that the institute is not involved in cases of the building collapses, but clients engage any architect to draw the plan.
“A lot of these buildings that are collapsing if you check, you will find out that our members are really not involved. What happens is that a lot of clients once they get an architect to design a building and to get approval, they just go ahead and build according to their own dictates.
“Most of the times they do not have architects on these jobs. So we want to appeal to the government that it should be mandatory that the architect should not just end these jobs with the drawings.
“He should also be able to supervise the implementation of what he has designed. Because often times he could design a building on two floors and during construction a client says he wants to add two more floors”.
Eboh explained that report has not indicted the institute on any case of building collapse but a lot of building owners engage in what they call direct labor and use people who are not registered.
“That you went to school to read architecture doesn’t make you architect until you have fulfilled the conditions for Licension and certified by the Architects Registration Council of Nigeria then can you be called an Architect and then can you hold responsibilities for whatever you design”.
Meanwhile, Eboh said the retreat would address the issue has of building collapse and ensure synergy with government to nip the menace in the bud.
“It is a source of concern to us and part of what we’ll be discussing at this retreat will be how best to confront the issues. Because it’s not that there are no laws to govern this but the implementation of these laws has been the problem.
“So as an Institute we will think how to restrategise in the retreat to find out what best we can do to assist the government that discharge the responsibility of giving approval for these buildings to make sure that the space under which buildings are erected is such that nobody who does not have any business erecting a building should be in that business in the first place”.