Idoma-born Echono emerges President, Nigerian Institute of Architects

Idoma-born Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, Arc. Sonny Echono, has emerged the new President, Nigerian Institute of Architects.

Echono,who was Saturday night invested as the 28th president of the association after its Annual General Meeting,AGM in Abuja,vowed to project the importance of the profession to the delight of everyone.

Speaking to reporters at the event that dragged into the night,Arc. Echono said the focus of his administration would be the strengthening of the development control mechanism of the country.

“We are going to strengthen the development control mechanism but emphasis will be on the development planning so that we plan our cities, plan our local government headquarters, plan our urban centres first before we begin to develop.

“And at the development control stage,you are now monitoring the implementation of that plan,so you ensure that people don’t make the mistakes before you come and demolish the buildings because it is wasteful resources,” he said.

He spoke on his first priority assignments in office thus: ”It is a tremendous privilege to lead the body of architects in Nigeria for the next two years and as I told my colleagues earlier in the day, my purpose will be first, to project the important roles that architects play in every society, to help to galvanise and to activate all our resources within the economy and channel them properly towards national development.”

“Architects are the ones that provide the needed infrastructures in any building,whether hotels, hospitals, schools or offices, “he explained

Regretting that the average life span of buildings in Nigeria was just between 20 to thirty years instead of 100 to 500 years known in advanced world,Arc. Echono vowed that the trend would be stopped by his leadership.

According to him,the new leadership of the organisation he heads would,” ensure that the services of architects are available in every nook and cranny of this country, particularly, the rural communities.”

“We don’t want our rural communities to fail before we now go and begin to demolish, begin to waste so much resources,” he said.

He spoke further:”If you look at the quality of the buildings being built around the country today,the average life span is between 20 to 30 years,no country can afford that type of waste.

“A building is supposed to last at least,a hundred years. And if it is properly designed and properly constructed using good materials, it is going to last a minimum of 500 years. We cannot continue to be replacing the buildings that we have every 30 years,” he added.

The new NIA president,while noting that:”We have not been able to judiciously utilize our own land resources”,said:” We are spreading buildings on the ground in spite of high cost of infrastructure and so on,so we need to to also mold and change the attitude of Nigerians.”

” I know Nigerians like to defend space,you want to say ‘this is my plot,this is my building.’ But we are looking forward to promoting the idea of multiple complexes. You have blocks of flats for mass housing and so with limited space,you can accommodate more people because we have one of the highest population growth rate in the world, currently in the region of 3.2 to 3.3 percent per annum.

“At some point, I can say I’m beginning to see that already happening, that the contest for land is going to become fierce in the years ahead,so we must find ways to use our lands more judiciously, more prudently and more productively.”

Speaking on why there are high rate of building collapse, he said:”It is unfortunate that most of the cases that you hear today are situations where either a client neglect to professionals at all and therefore hire quacks in an attempt to cut corners or he uses poor contractors,inefficient and unqualified contractors who carry on projects that they cannot handle or in some cases,they even engage consultants at the early stages to do the design.

” But when it comes to construction where supervision is required, they will say,’no,we will do it by direct labour or we can do it by ourselves, I have a younger brother who is so called local engineer, he can handle it for me.’ And this is causing lots of not just resources but also lots of lives. So, the regulatory agencies are working together in harmony, they are actually seven of them.

“We are working with engineers, we are working with land surveyors,estate surveyors, builders and everybody in the building industry is coming together to address this problem,because this is one of the things that we cannot afford as a country.”

According to him,”We need to spread our development planning first of all before we talk about our development control, because by the time you are doing the development control, you already have the background. It is like trying to cure what is already existing. ”

He spoke on how his intervention as Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education led to improvement on quality of structures in public tertiary institutions.

“In my first meeting with vice chancellors,provosts and rectors of our universities, polytechnics and colleges of education as well of their governing council,few months after I got into the Ministry of Education, I said to them that the mere fact that I am here as a trained architect presupposes that going forward, any structure that is going to be put in any of our institutions must reflect the leadership,it should be structures that we can relate to and feel proud of and we sent this message out.

” We have been working with the primary agencies involved in the provision of these infrastructures-the National Universities Commission, NUC in terms if determination and then the funding agencies, the TETfund and UBEC, that the quality of our buildings must improve.

“I also said we must also ensure that the procurement process are such that will deliver competent contractors who have track record of performance and who have the capacity to execute those projects.”

” I can confirm that there have been improvement in the quality of those buildings in the recent past.

“The ones,we inherited,some of them,I’m ashamed to associate myself with. ”

Echono added:”But going forward again, these are some of the areas where we feel professional associations like the Nigerian Institute of architects should make their services available.

“They should hold their members to very high standard of performance and to eliminate all forms of savoury practices and ruthless competition, undercutting of each other within the various professions.

(Credit: Vanguard)