By Isqil Najim
Nigeria’s engineering profession is watching itself being crowded out of its own industry. With sites increasingly run by unlicensed artisans and a national building code that exists largely on paper, panelists at the NSE Ikeja Branch Annual Business Luncheon are now calling for the direct enforcement of professional site standards.
This was the collective verdict at a panel discussion held on Wednesday at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Ikeja GRA, Lagos. Industry leaders gathered at the event to confront the current state of the profession and, as the panel moderator put it, say it all out loud.
The session was moderated by QS Okwukwe Faith Ezeugoh, Chairman of the Association of Quantity Surveyors in Contracting Organisations. The panelists were: Engr. Sunday Asade, Managing Director and CEO of Meyers Plc, an alumnus of the University of Illinois, the University of Lagos, and Harvard Business School; Engr. Tokunbo Ajanaku, National Chairman of the Nigerian Institution of Civil Engineers; Akin Akinola, CEO and Founding Partner of WNM Limited and WN Global Limited, formerly of GMAC and NTL in the United Kingdom; and Engr. Kamal Gbadamosi, built environment practitioner.
“We see a situation where people who do not love the profession are taking over the industry, If you go to any site, 80 to 90 percent of people there are artisans who are not qualified.” Engr. Asade opened with a blunt assessment.
QS Ezeugoh agreed that the word “engineer” is casually applied to every artisan on the payroll, while the licensed professional standing on the same site is left searching for a different word to describe himself. “It is time to reclaim the value chain in our profession.” she said.
In response to lack of compliance with National Building Code, Engr Asade advocated that Artisans must be formally brought into the system through what he described as a community compliance policy: train them, assess them, accredit them, then tie that accreditation by law to the scope of work they are permitted to do.
He further added that the same rigour should reach procurement. Materials suppliers and importers should face formal certification requirements. “What you do not measure, you cannot control,” he said. “What you cannot control, you cannot improve.”
Engr. The National Chairman NICE, Engr.Tokunbo Ajanaku cautioned that before lobbying for the code, engineers must first assess whether the code itself is fit for purpose. He recommended that the first thing we need to do as a committee of professionals is establish the operation of the Build code to verify whether the code is operable, then take it to the legislature.
Engr. Gbadamosi lamented what he described as “Stamp and Go consultans” , who sign drawings without reading them, handing their professional seal to an assistant with instructions to stamp whatever arrives. He extended the charge to Clients who refuse to fund materials testing, because skipping verification is exactly what produces structures that collapse. Government, he said, is not exempt. “When you promulgate a law and you don’t enforce it, it becomes entertainment.”
Engr. Akinola, however, offered a expanded perspective on implementation, while at the same time agreeing with previous speakers. ‘It is not enough to put together regulation and want professionals to adhere to it,” he said. “It is also important that the regulators are able to police(the system). He explained that regulator must be able to go to sites and enforce the law.
Ezeugoh mentioned that more than 70 percent of construction activity in Nigeria is driven by the informal sector, adding that these people cannot be legislated into irrelevance.
Engr. Asade remarked that exclusion is not a strategy. What is needed is a tiered certification model — artisans trained, assessed, and graded at defined levels, with each grade carrying a precise scope of what the holder may and may not do. Someone who has never supervised a concrete pour should not be permitted to manage a three-storey structures. “So they should know the level of work they could do.” Each certification grade must be enforceable, with consequences for exceeding its defined scope.
In response to a question on engineers doing the artisan job, Engr Akinola observed that, artisans from neighbouring countries were routinely preferred on construction sites— not because Nigerians lack capability, but because those countries had built intentional vocational training programmes. “An artisan is an artisan, not an engineer,” he said. “But you can be at the apex of being an artisan.” Nigeria’s training infrastructure must be built to honour that distinction.
Engr. Ajanaku spoke on value chain. According to him, Before issuing any more calls to reclaim the value chain, the profession must first answer honestly: does it actually know what that value chain is?
“What you do not see, you cannot chase,” he said. “Do we even know what this value chain represents? Do we understand in detail what the value chain in every sphere of engineering is?”
He illustrated with water. In 2017 and 2018, the investable value available in wastewater management in Lagos alone stood at approximately 300 billion naira per year, spanning treatment, reuse, recycling, and associated services. “But we don’t know that,” he said.
He cited case of concrete. It is not only fresh concrete production that engineers are missing, he said — it is concrete waste. Broken, discarded material lying in fragments across Lagos is a business that no one has thought to pick up. “Concrete waste in Lagos is as big a business as concrete production. Unfortunately, we do not even see it.”
“When we were in school, we were taught to be very arrogant, and I use that word unapologetically, with respect to making money. We thought that once your design was fantastic, you had arrived.” After nearly four decades in practice, he said, he has learned otherwise. “It is all about the money. Technology is driven by money. Innovation is driven by money.” The younger engineers in the room should not need 40 years to reach that conclusion.
Engr. Gbadamosi agreed and added that Engineers must drive compliance deliberately and intentionally, he said — criminalising violations where necessary, rewarding whistle-blowers, and ensuring that resident engineers on site are equipped to know what to look for and what to reject.
“I see us engineers fold our hands and look away in so many areas that we should not. Let us not run away from government. Let us get involved. Who else is going to make the policy? Who else is going to ensure it is implemented? That starts today. It starts here.” QS Okwukwe Faith Ezeugoh, concluded.