Surveyors task govt on local content, decry quackery, forgery 

Surveyors under the aegis of the Association of Private Practicing Surveyors of Nigeria (APPSN), a subgroup of Nigeria Institution of Surveyors (NIS), have called on the Federal Government to ensure that contractors respect the Local Content Act by engaging Nigerian professionals in their works.

Vice President International of NIS, Vincent Olumide Adewebi, made the call, while speaking to newsmen during the 2024 yearly general meeting and luncheon of Lagos State branch of APPSN, with the theme, ‘Sustainable Financial Solutions & Understanding Financial Literacy As A Private Practitioner,’ in Ikeja.

Adewebi, a former Secretary General of NIS, noted that non-compliance to the local content law remains one of the major challenges facing surveying practice and other professionals in the built environment.

His words: “Sometimes our work is lumped up with other projects, and the country doesn’t get the best because surveyors are not actually engaged directly to do such jobs.

“That is the challenge we have been battling with, and we are making a headway. It is important that at a point of drafting and awarding contracts, governments at all levels should try to separate some of these professional aspects so that professionals in the country will be able to do those jobs for the benefit of the country.

“For instance, if you say company X from outside Nigeria should do a road, within that road we have the engineering and surveying components, if you don’t break it up, insist and put clauses there that you must use Nigerian professionals, sometimes the owner of the company might decide to bring everyone from outside the country.