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The Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria has decried the incessant national grid failures and the high spate of building collapses across the country, saying that the trend is due to the lack of effective investigation to find a lasting solution.
COOREN President, Sadiq Abubakar, said this while answering questions from newsmen on the sidelines of a three-day Regional Engineering Stakeholders Summit on Restructure, Reforms and the New Operational Framework, held in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital.
Abubakar disclosed that COREN has been working on finding lasting solutions to these issues through committees that have been set up.
Abubakar stated, “One of our key functions as regulators of engineering is what you call the ERM, that is Engineering, Regulation, Monitoring and Enforcement. Now, we have this ERM in different sectors.
“There is the building collapse is in the construction sector, while the failure of the national grid is in the power sector and we have different committees that do this work.
What we have not succeeded in doing in this country is to convince the entire nation to accept that engineering infrastructure failures, of which these two are good examples, need to have good inspectors who are trained and certified.
“In our case, we don’t have that in this country. In the entire globe, when an engineering infrastructure fails, the first thing you’ll do is, mobilize certified, trained, licensed inspectors. In this country, we don’t have one.”
Continuing, he said, “We only do this in one sector, which I’m sure you know. When a plane crashes, Nigeria is very good in that, we’ve aligned ourselves to the global practice. They will go and look for certified, licensed inspectors all over the world and they’ll come.
“I’m sure you recall when they say they’re looking for the black box, that is part of the investigation. But when a bridge collapses, when a dam collapses, when the national grid fails, when a building fails, we’ve not heard anything called investigation.”
Abubakar said it was the key reason COREN has restructured, saying, “We have now established these investigative committees, we have established what we call whistleblowers.
“You see a building collapse, not because it wants to collapse, but because somebody refuses to say something when he sees something. When something is happening in the building site or the construction site, you’ll see sharp practices, you’ll see adulteration of materials, you’ll see cutting corners, you will see a lot of things.
“We have now, in our system, appointed what we call whistleblowers to be going around. Once they see these things happening, they’ll alert us. We’ll send our task force, the ERM committee and then they’ll go and stop that place.
“They will seal the site, they’ll stop work and then we’ll investigate. If we’re not happy with what we’re seeing, we’ll stop that building. This is the way to stop building collapse.”
The COREN President also called for more stringent sanctions to be put in place and meted out to offenders.
The Chairman of the South-South Regional Steering Committee of COREN, George Okoroma, corroborated the views of the council President and assured that the committee will do its best to ensure improved engineering across the nation.
Okoroma averred, “Obviously by the fact that COREN has decentralized activities to the regions, which means that engineering investigations are going to come very close, and of course, the engineering regulation is coming closer to the people.
“What that means is that we’ll have more opportunities to now do investigation, surveillance, and to know activities that happen within the region. The whole idea is that engineering practice is going down to the nooks and crannies of all the local government areas. That means that we’ve ensured that not the people going to Abuja now, but it had to be within the region.
“In the area of building collapse, we would be going closer to see what is happening. If you heard the COREN President speak about engineering surveillance and engineering intelligence, it means that our eyes will now be closer to the environment, looking at what is happening.
“We would identify structures that are likely to have issues, then we’ll investigate. COREN cannot just come out and begin to make pronouncements about any particular building, but they have to do an investigation, even if there’s a failure of a structure. And of course, with all the engineering knowledge we have, we’ll be able to proffer solutions and then mitigate it against a future occurrence.”
Highlight of the event was the launching and inauguration of the South-South Regional Steering Committee tasked with regulating three things; engineering education, professional development of members and regulating the engineering practice by companies in the private sector, by individuals in the public sector among others.
