Is there anything wrong with the 39-year-old Land Use Act? No, says the Nigerian Institute of Surveyors (NIS) President Akinloye Oyegbola, who argued that the problem with the law enacted in 1977 lies with its operators and not the legislation. He is worried that the country does not check structures for flaws, leading to building collapse. He advocates more use of surveyors, insisting that over 60 per cent of the country’s roads require their contributions. Oyegbola speaks on these and other issues with MUYIWA LUCAS.
The Land Use Act has remained contentious among stakeholders. What is your take on the Act?
More often than not, when something is controversial, a lot can be derived from it. It is not going to be easy for a land owner to embrace the Land Use Act in its entirety, whereas it is expedient for the government and the people to have it so that it can engender proper development of the land. So, you can be sure that we will always have those divergent views; but then one would always have the upper hand and which will be more beneficial to the people. So, it is not the Land Use Act itself that has problems, it is those who are operating it. This is because the Act has made it in such a way that to a very reasonable extent, the land owners would have been satisfied to an extent (it cannot be in its entirety because something is being taken away from them), because the Act made it in such a way that there are conditions for which a land can be taken by the government. The problem is that have those conditions been met on the part of the owners? If not, then they become areas where people can come in and probe. But the Act has tried as much as possible to bring in palliatives to a reasonable extent, which if executed to the letter, would make the land owner feel better. But what we have now on ground is the abuse of the Act, which is causing the problem.
The Lagos State Government recently announced plans to jail land grabbers. Do you think this will solve the Omo Onile problem?
Incidentally, land grabbers are not Omo Onile. The Omo Onile is the land owner; and we own land by history because land is not manufactured. So, ownership of land is by history and so some people will always say they own it because their fore fathers may have dwelt there several centuries ago. The land grabbers are either their agents or speculators, who believe they know too much about land in a particular area and they are now using the inadequacies in the process to their own advantage. Land grabbing starts as an attempt. That is not to say we do not have people, who genuinely stand as agents between the seller and buyer. Their activity is just like any other offence. So, if their activities is on the wrong side of the law then they must be punished.
How can a surveyor help in the economics of land, especially in areas where there is acute shortage of land?
Basically, by the time a surveyor does the cadastral work properly, he has helped a lot, economically. This is because when he demarcates land properly, there is very minimal level of litigation. A surveyor also helps to cut cost in terms of compensation payment to property owners whose property may be demolished for road or railway construction because the surveyor would have been able to properly mapped out the land areas long before construction started. Generally with Lagos, from time to time you can only enhance the economics of land by the way you manage it; how you zone it for the respective needs of the people. More often than not, because Lagos is a coastal town, you see a lot of sandfilling and dredging. But before you even dredge, there would have been a kind of hydrographic surveying to know the sea bed. While doing the dredging, you also need a surveyor to tell you how far you can go. We believe that with a proper deployment of the surveyor, so much can be saved in terms of cost.
The Federal Government plans to produce a million units of housing yearly to tackle the housing deficit. What should be the role of surveyors in this initiative?
The role of the surveyor starts from the concept itself because whatever has to be done about housing is on land. For instance if Lagos State says its wants to do something on land, it has to know what it has before it can use certain part for certain projects. A surveyor will tell you what you have before you determine what you want to use for what. A surveyor is involved from the conceptualisation, to development.
Building collapse is of great concern now. How can surveyors help to stem the tide?
For anything that has to do with height, there is a need for surveyors’ involvement. Even after a structure has been put up, especially if it is massive or a high rise, there is a need to monitor deformation. We have not been monitoring structures for deformation. We monitor dams for deformation, but we have not been monitoring structures. There is a need to monitor for deformation of structures, especially if you have to stockpile to construct a building. Look at our bridges for instance, how often are they monitored for deformation? It doesn’t need to be visible before you see deformation if you monitor well because if it becomes visible then it becomes more dangerous and expensive to repair. Collapse of a structure doesn’t happen overnight; if structures are properly monitored then there won’t be collapse.
To a lay man, surveying is simply measuring of land. How do you regulate the practice of surveying in Nigeria?
Surveying is one profession that has a very old professional body; it is among the oldest professional bodies in the country. It dates back to 1934, with the renowned nationalist, Herbert Macauley as its leader. Its name then was “Licenced Surveyors’ Association” (LSA); in 1960, the name was changed to Land Surveyors Association of Nigeria, with late Surveyor C.T. Olumide as its chairman. It was in 1966 at a surveyors’ conference in Enugu that the name Nigeria Institution of Surveyors (NIS) was adopted.
By virtue of the age of the profession and its practice, it has gone through thick and thin. What we have on ground now is a regulatory body, which is called “Surveyors Council of Nigeria” (SURCON), which took off in 1989 under Cap 425. Before then we had the licensing board as the regulatory body. SURCON has been involved in the regulation of the practice and the certification of surveyors. But that is not to say that the professional body does not do anything about regulation. Under our constitution, the body has its ethics rule guiding members. So, an erring member could be punished under the constitution of the association, but when it comes to the issue of serious misdemeanour that may even involve the withdrawal of practicing certificate, because the association did not issue you the practicing certificate, then it cannot withdraw it. The association will only report to the regulatory body. When such gets to the regulatory body, it would first go through the surveyors investigative panel (SIP), who investigates and refers to the disciplinary committee. At the disciplinary committee stage, the surveyor has a right to appear with his lawyer so that there is proper hearing. We expect that anybody, who has anything untowards perpetrated by a surveyor could either report to the association or to the regulatory body. None of these two bodies will pamper a surveyor for not adhering to the practice of the profession as appropriate disciplinary action would be taken after due investigation of the case.
Is there any acceptable standard for land measurement or gauge?
Basically, for the surveyor and as a practitioner, there is no standard measurement. A parcel of land is a parcel of land. But by talking of gauge, it depends on the kind of development you want to have on the land. We have different types of development for different areas, which is the exclusive preserve of the Town Planners- they do the zone and others and they determine what should be where. We, as surveyors, also assist in this because we would have provided so much information about the land to be developed. But basically, the Town Planners determine what can be put on a parcel of land at a particular time.
What are the challenges of surveying?
Like I said, the underdevelopment is a major challenge for fulfilment for practitioners. Although that is general, that is just surveying. But in surveying, the cost of what I had just talked about earlier that the practice itself does not advertise itself. One major challenge we have is that it’s every now and then we need to continue to let people know what the surveyor can do. Interestingly, people have limited the input of the work of the surveyor in the development of the country to a very streamlined section and it is just out of ignorance and that’s why we have to go out and let them know that there is still a lot even in the face of the gross underutilisation that we are talking about, there is still a lot that is being left out that the surveyor can still do. And you will now find out that more often than not even the professionals, who know that they are supposed to put in surveyors on those things because they know they can’t do it but the people, who assign them or commissioned them to do it, may not know that they needed a surveyor. And because that one doesn’t know, he won’t specify the kind of surveyor that should do the job. So, he goes out to look for a less qualified hand to do the job for him because he doesn’t want to pay well and that was why one of the recommendations I made then when I appeared before the House Committee on Works during the debate on the road maintenance agency bill in 2001, was that when turnkey projects are been given out, it is good for the agency or government giving it out to specify who does what and with what experience and what is he going to be paid. When that is specified and there is no adherence to it, then you could easily identify what the problem is.
There seems to be deafening silence from the NIS in terms of making contributions to national issues. How do you react to this?
For one to be able to solve a problem, then there is a need to really understand the problem. I had thought over and over again about this impression you have just observed and one thing I have found out is that every profession has its own peculiarity in terms of their practice. What I have found out is that the profession of surveying is not self-advertisng. For instance, when you see a good structure, what comes to mind is that an architect has done a fantastic job on it, even before the engineer that saw to the structure being where it is for people to see. Those are professions that people can see what they can do. For instance, whatever might have gone into that same structure, in terms of the survey will not be obvious at that particular time. I have made up my mind that if the profession does not advertise itself then our own drive should be far more than those in the allied profession. So, it means we have to redouble our efforts in terms of publicity and enlightenment that would enhance the image of the profession and that is exactly what I am up to.
Surveying cuts across a lot of human endeavours, but just like any other profession in Nigeria, there is gross under utilisation of the profession generally and surveying cannot be an exception. What the surveyor is known for is just cadastral surveying- which is a negligible fraction of what the surveyor can do. For instance, nobody thinks the surveyor is involved in road construction, railway construction, and anything that has to do with movement from one place to another. In any construction, the surveyor has to be on site, whereas an engineer may not necessarily be there, but just come in from time to time to ensure compliance to specification. But then, that sticking to the specification is ascertained by the presence of a surveyor. So, a surveyor has to be on a construction site all the time to be able to say that a predetermined level for every stage of the job is being adhered to. For instance, in road construction, in terms of level and alignment, it is not just alignment, it is the different levels that you want to maintain so that you have a road that has the required exploitational value. For instance, if you see a road that has flexible pavement (it tar) and there is coagulation of water on it then it means the levels where not well taken care of when it was being constructed. That is why the surveyor has to be on site always. Let it be noted that 60 per cent of roads constructed in the country has the input of a surveyor.
In this context, who is a surveyor?
In the past, before the advent of the incursion of the computer into all professions, when it was still very analogue, we would say the surveyor is a person trained in the science and art of taking measurement on the surface of the earth, in the water and also in the space. Such measurement are well taken and they depict the position of land and man-made and natural features on it so that when it is to be used for whatever purpose, you will have so much information on it for proper utilisation when the need arises. But now, with the advancement of technology, we have found surveyors being involved in not just the acquisition and the presentation of information on the land, surveyors are now involved in the management of even the information-that is, in the area of geo-informatics. This is called geographical information system (GIS).
