The President, Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN), Mr Kashim Ali, in Abuja on Friday described building collapse as a national disgrace to the country.
Ali, who spoke at a news conference to mark the “2013 COREN 22nd Engineering Assembly”, said that owners and supervising engineers of collapsed building should be charged with murder.
According to him, the council will no longer tolerate issues of collapsed building as it endangered the integrity of engineers.
“Building collapse is a national disgrace and everybody who is a patriot should be concerned.
“A collapsed building is worse than someone driving and killing people on the road, yet the case of a driver that kills is taken seriously than the case of a collapsed building.
“Under our law if a driver kills, he would be charged for man slaughter, but if we have houses collapse on people’s head they are hardly prosecuted,’’ he said
Ali stressed the need to punish offenders of engineering rules, adding: “they don’t deserve anything less than death sentence.”
He said the sector was such that had no room for mistakes, adding that a simple mistake could lead to serious consequences.
The president urged Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to submit the list of engineers working for them to the council to enable to it easily identify quacks or to hold them accountable for substandard jobs.
The measure, he said, was also to ensure that only engineers certified by COREN were allowed to head Engineering Departments and Units as well as supervise engineering projects in the MDAs.
Ali, who spoke on the forth coming Engineering Assembly slated for Aug. 20, said it was an annual event designed to update the knowledge of its members to keep abreast with best practices.
He said the theme for this year’s event is “Accelerating National Development: the Role of Engineering Profession in Nigeria”.
He said the theme was aimed at educating the public on the laws regulating the practice of engineering in Nigeria. (NAN)
We also 32bf need to have national priorities on life; for goodness sake, the over 30 lives lost in the Lekki Gardens building collapse cannot be replaced, we can’t place naira terms on them. We need to really do more. We can gain more in an orderly environment.