‘Non-involvement of professionals fuelling corruption in construction industry’

• Quantity surveyors decry non-involvement in Lagos-Calabar Highway project
• Seek role in compensation of property owners, graft control in construction sector
• Suspend construction of Abeokuta/Kobapedualised road, appellant prays court

The Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors (NIQS), yesterday, lamented the exclusion of its members in signature projects of the Federal Government, especially the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project.

It stressed that the non-inclusion of its members was the reason for corruption in the construction sector as well as in the quagmire associated with the compensation of property owners affected by the project.

Chairman of the Lagos State chapter of the Institute, Olanrewaju Farotimi, disclosed this during a media briefing to herald activities of 2024 yearly Quantity Surveyors (QS) Week in Lagos.

The event, themed: “Quantity Surveyors Contribution to Nigeria’s Economic Transformation Agenda,” kicked off, yesterday, with a football match competition among quantity surveyor students from all the tertiary institutions in Lagos, and will be concluded with a symposium on the theme and investiture dinner, where the new set of executives, to be led by Rilwan Olanrewaju Balogun, will be unveiled and invested in Sheraton Hotel, Ikeja, on Saturday.

Farotimi said that not engaging quantity surveyors in such monumental projects would lead to short-changing the government, which had been bedevilled with scarce resources.
IN another development, a litigant, Mufutau Kehinde, has asked the Court of Appeal sitting in Ibadan, Oyo State, to suspend the ongoing construction of the Abeokuta/Kobape dualised road, pending the determination of his appeal against the judgment of Justice Mobolaji Ojo of the Ogun State High Court.

Kehinde, in his appeal, filed by his lawyer, Dr Dada Awosika (SAN), listed the Attorney-General of Ogun State and the Director-General, Bureau of Lands and Survey as respondents.

Specifically, the appellant is praying for an injunction restraining the respondents either by themselves or anyone acting under their authority from further constructing, meddling, interfering or tampering with all that piece or parcel of land, situate, lying and being along Abeokuta/ Kobape dualised road within the 1.5km acquisition measuring approximately 85.3 hectares, pending the determination of his appeal.

As for the grounds for the appeal, the appellant averred that the lower court’s judgment of May 15, 2019, resolved all three issues in favour of the defendants against his claims, while also dismissing all four legs of his claims.

But being dissatisfied with the judgment of Justice Ojo, he filed a Notice of Appeal dated May 30, 2019, in the exercise of his constitutional right of appeal and the appeal has been entered before the court, while he has also filed and served his appellant’s brief of argument on the respondents.

He averred that despite their knowledge of his appeal, he has “in the last couple of weeks observed massive construction, rebuilding and regeneration taking place within the area of land which is also the subject matter of this appeal.