The President, Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors and a former Minister of Power, Murtala Aliyu, speaks on building collapse and the institute’s upcoming conference, among others, in this interview with JESUSEGUN ALAGBE
There is a widening gap in housing deficit in the country. What should be done to address this problem?
People talk about a deficit of 17 million houses in the country, but I don’t believe in such a number. I believe in growing the economy; I believe in addressing the supply end and harmonising demand and supply.
If we believe that we have 17 million housing deficit and say there’s 10 per cent government intervention per annum, that’s 1.7 million houses to be built by the government per annum. Assuming the intervention is done in 10 years, that’s 170,000 houses to be built per annum. Let’s say we divide this country into 1,000 local governments (though there are 774 local governments presently), that’s 170,000 houses to be built in each local government per annum. Imagine putting up 170,000 houses annually for 10 years, who will be the off-takers?
Let’s say the house is built at N3.5m and it’s being offered for N5m to be paid in 20 years, the person will be paying N20,000 per month for 20 years. I don’t see an average Nigerian going to a local government to pick up a house and be paying N20,000 per month when they can pay less than that for rent. So, until we address the market, we cannot talk about intervention; but when you grow the economy, consumption will increase and people will look for better houses.
Also, until we start developing local materials and make house become a marketable commodity and have a cultural re-orientation about home ownership, we will have a problem. So, these are the issues, but not that we have a housing deficit of 17 million. Also, if the government wants to carry out a serious intervention in the housing market, it requires a stakeholders’ meeting, not the ones being done on paper.
The institute has been clamouring for the involvement of quantity surveyors in engineering projects in the country in view of the increasing cases of building collapse. What is the situation of things now?
Building collapse is truly a challenge and one of the main problems behind it is non-compliance with regulations by the clients, the managers of projects and the contractors. There are rules. Quantity surveyors play a collaborative role in that respect but we are not principals to the factors causing building collapse. First of all, architects are artists — they design impossible things; the engineers put the designs in structures. But once that link is missing, even a regular building can collapse. So, from the design, we have a problem.
There is also the issue of adhering to specifications. When you have a building, a beam carries weight and the weight is transferred to a column to the ground. Now, if there is a weakness in one of the columns or problems in the components of the beams, they will not be able to carry the load of the building. And the designer takes into consideration what weights the building will carry. However, if all the specifications are well done and the project is handed over to the contractor, if he cuts corners, there will be problems.
Contractors sometimes compromise on the quality in terms of size and quantity of items to use. The supervisors are supposed to put an eye to ensure that things are done properly. The quantity surveyors are supposed to be advisers on process and cost, but not components. As a group of professionals, I know there is a group called the BCPG (Building Collapse Prevention Guild) in Lagos, which is doing well. The members meet once in a while and when they notice there is a possibility of a building collapsing, there is a flash. They raise the alarm and also take part in the investigation if it eventually happens.
They also educate people on why they need to conform to standards and specifications. The other party, who are the clients, i.e. the owners of the building, are also at fault sometimes. Maybe they see a particular building they like somewhere, they collect pictures and designs, and duplicate it somewhere else without considering the soil condition in that location and other components that are similar to both locations. So, there are quite a number of complications, but if people conform to regulations, I am sure we would have fewer cases of building collapse.
In countries where we see conformity and adherence to regulations, they don’t witness this crisis, aside from maybe there are natural causes like earthquakes. Even in an earthquake-prone area, there are certain things to do to make the building absorb the shock. As quantity surveyors, we try our best to ensure that whatever role we play, we have an Ethics and Practice Committee that monitors our members. Once they are involved in a project and we sense there is a problem, even if the building does not collapse, they are going to face the committee and that means they may lose their licences to practise.
Meanwhile, whether land or quantity surveyors, we should be involved in all engineering projects, but the peculiarity of history has made it a bit difficult. When the colonial masters came, they were taking our resources to build the little infrastructure that were needed. So, they controlled both the income and the expenditure, and until the 1960s, almost all the quantity surveyors participating in the projects were from abroad because they didn’t want us to know how much of our money was to be spent on the projects.
So, they discouraged local quantity surveyors from getting involved. Now, it is becoming clear, because we major in details, whereas the engineers major in bulk; we are more prudent and sensitive to pricing. We should use people appropriately. When it comes to costing, use surveyors; when it comes to designs, use engineers; and if it is housing design, use architects. Let everyone work according to their core competence.
So what is the institute doing to influence the government in this respect?
We are now putting up a policy paper for the government to ensure that: first, quantity surveyors are involved right from the budgeting stage; second, on the procurement level, we should be involved so that we can assess all inputs from all professionals. This is why we want to ensure that we are appropriately engaged and contribute correctly to the development of the country.
What prompted your choice of this year’s conference theme?
The biannual conference in which I will hand over to the first female president of the institute is coming up from November 17 to 22, 2015 here in Lagos. The topic for this year’s event will be ‘Politics, policies and development: The role of the professionals.’ The reason is that we’ve seen policies in place, sometimes wrongly put and sometimes correctly put but wrongly communicated. So, we believe that professionals from all sectors should participate in politics, so that when we are talking about media, there’s someone who knows about it in government; when we talk about construction, there’s someone who is in there; when we talk about commerce, there’s someone who is represented in the government, and so on.
Professionals shouldn’t shy away from politics. When we look at the members of the National Assembly, over 40 per cent of them are lawyers. We should not leave it to them. We should be part of the game. We should play politics in a way that we can support, participate and influence, because politics influences the formulation of polices and policies affect development.
In Nigeria, politics requires all professionals to participate. That’s the reason for the choice of this theme. And we have invited a number of people to the event – governors, ministers, National Assembly members. We have also invited our foreign friends – the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, the South African Association of Quantity Surveyors and the African Association of Quantity Surveyors. We have invited other professionals from the building sector. It’s a weeklong event.
You were once a Minister of Power. Have you seen any meaningful change in the power sector in the country?
There are facts. First, there is demand. What we generate today as power is not adequate. The city of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia alone consumes up to 25,000MW. So truly, we need power. Power as a market has challenges. Previous governments have just been spending at the procurement level. For instance, the power station in Omotosho, when the turbines were brought in here, they couldn’t be moved there because you don’t pick turbines on the shelf because none of our roads and bridges could carry them; so, they were at the port for years. Our transmission capability is at the peak.
Today, if we talk about supply from Osogbo to Lagos, there are no feeders or reinforcements, the sub-stations are also weak. So, if we pump in more power, say 10,000MW, the systems will collapse. We have a weak transmission system and this is a big problem. Even at the distribution end, there is problem. So, if we want to solve the problem step-by-step, we have to go back to the generation of power.
Before former President Olusegun Obasanjo came, generation was 70-30 per cent for hydro and gas; now, it’s the reverse. Gas is supposed to generate about 70 per cent, but there is no gas and people will say Nigeria is a country with gas in abundance. The Nigerian Gas Company sold gas to the then National Electric Power Authority at about 90/70 per cubic feet, while the market price was about $2. Even at that price, NEPA didn’t pay. So, everything was based on power at the consumption level that the government had to subsidise the power, and not only that. When the gas was supplied to NEPA for consumption, there was only one pipe.
Until we sit down and address it holistically, we will not get ahead. There are windmills and other effective innovations today that we can use; and also until the pricing is right, investment in the power sector will be difficult. And pricing may not be right because an average Nigerian believes that power is a dividend of democracy – to be freely given. The input to generate must be strengthened and then we will be on the right path.
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