By Maduka Nweke
The Vice President of the Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveying Mr. Bamidele Mafidiwo has said that unless the problems of power, diesel, cement, exchange rate and other factors are addressed in the country, the cost of building construction will continue to be on the high side.
Speaking at the Quarterly Interactive Forum organized by the Property and Environmental Writers Association (PEWAN) in Lagos, recently, Mafidiwo said that power, diesel, cement, forex among others have contributed to make cost of building construction very high in Nigeria. He noted that owing to power shortage, a lot of companies that manufacture building materials relocated to nearby countries giving the few ones the monopoly to hike prices at random.
“If there is no power to lubricate the manufacturing machines, the companies will depend on generators to power their engines and this is capital intensive. Government ought to declare state of emergency in the built environment so that prices of housing will crash for the abject poor members of the citizenry will first get accommodation to hide their heads.
“Again the use of quacks has continued to make accommodation and construction very high. This is because, quacks/fakers will be looking short cuts in order to get the job and make gains. Use of real professionals in building construction will help to curb incessant building collapse because cost of construction is a major factor in building collapse. Use of Engineers rather than the real professional is also dangerous because civil engineers cannot do the work of a surveyor nor the work of an architect and vice verser.
Earlier, the National President Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors, Michael Olayemi Shonubi, who was also the Chief Guest of Honour at the Interactive Forum noted that because most of building collapse defaulters have not received the commensurate punishment for catastrophe they caused the society, they other practitioners will always take the matter with kid glove.