Experts want regulators to enforce professional fee payment

To further entrench ethical practice, professionals have appealed to regulatory bodies in the built environment to enforce the existing scale of professional fees stipulated by law and award penalties to defaulters.

They spoke at a real estate roundtable on the challenges of professional service fee implementation in the Nigerian business environment organised by Bamigbola Consulting in partnership with BC Academy. The experts lamented that volume billing/pricing or commercialisation of professional services without recourse to the regulated scale of fees is unhealthy.

According to them, the regulatory bodies need to work with the civil service and those in private practice to entrench the scale of professional charges/fees, saying, there is a need for monitoring and enforcement of the regulatory scale of fees.

They also urged professionals to provide value-added services to customers to enhance willingness to pay.

Past Chairman, Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV) Lagos branch, Mr Kola Adefila, said public perception of the profession must be improved by complying with ethics, noting that the law allows full remuneration rather than peanuts for services.

He lamented that lack of adequate enforcement by regulatory bodies affects full remuneration, which a practitioner deserves for services rendered.

Immediate past National Chairman, NIESV Women Wing, Bridget Oranye, said inflation rate, cost of labour, and high operating cost have impacted the professional fees.

Oranye, a Portfolio Partner, Mark Odu & Company said: “We need to focus on the area of enlightening our clients that when you shortchange professionals, it will affect the services rendered. We also need regulatory bodies to enforce regulation guiding our practices, curb quackery and align with other professionals to make the building industry better.”

Chairman, Nigerian Institution of Surveyors (NIS), Lagos Chapter, Kolade Kasim, said their members comply with the professionals’ scale of fees. Besides, he disclosed that the institution introduced a new technology known as a course station in its secretariat to monitor jobs.

He said limiting the kind of jobs consultants can do forced practitioners to comply with existing regulations on the scale of fees. “Scale of fees is different from state to state due to differences in land value,” Kassim said.

A past chairman, Lagos NIESV, Dotun Bamigbola, said professional fees are functional, and implementable, while in some professions, there is proper monitoring, and deployment of technology that ensures ethical standards.

Director of Operations, Nigeria Insurer Association (NIA), Mr Lanre Ojuola, emphasised that when professionals are engaged in consultancy, it should be transparent, enhance service quality and ensure value for money.