By Eben Duru
As the entire national management and team members of the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigerian (COREN) settle down to the onboarding of the newly elected president, Abubakar Zubair, they cannot help but strongly look into a critical aspect of national infrastructure development – buildings.
One striking example of collapsed building incidents recently took place in no less a high-brow place than the Banana Island.
To think that that location is also not spared of collapsed building cases tells half the story.
Following the COREN council’s recent Extra Ordinary Council Meeting, Zubair was elected to take over from Rabiu Ali, who served a single term as President of COREN from April 2019 to April 2023.
According to a statement signed by the council Head, Public Relations, Haruna Ojonugwa, on Thursday, the new COREN president is a graduate of the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, where he obtained a degree in Agric & Bio-Resources Engineering in 1987, an MSc in Agric & Bio-Resources Engineering in 1992 and a PhD in Agric & Bio-Resources Engineering in 2002.
Being reputed for holding various leadership positions during his 34-year academic career should be an indicator of top-level performance to be expected from Abubakar.
While welcoming Abubakar and his team, perhaps, topping the list of key milestone accomplishments of his regime will be radically addressing the menace of collapsed buildings.
This is because high incidents of such infrastructural collapse are a major challenge to the integrity of the professional engineering and regulatory body.