Oyo judge tasks building professionals on due process

Debo Akinola

Justice Mukthar Abimbola of the Oyo state High Court has tasked stakeholders in building profession to ensure that infractions at any stage of construction is given the appropriate sanctions as prescribed by the law.

The judge, who was guest lecturer at the maiden edition of Guest lectures series of the Faculty of Environmental Design and Management, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, charged town planners and environmental agencies to ensure that anyone who contravenes the law is taken to court and made to face the music.

The lecture, centred on the relevance of the law to the built profession in Nigeria, was held at the First Bank Lecture Theatre of the university recently.

According to the guest lecturer, governmental powers are deeply rooted in the principle of legality, adding that the exercise of governmental authority or powers directly affecting individual interests must rest on legitimate and legal foundations.

Speaking on the relevance of town planning, architecture, civil engineering, land surveying, law and estate surveying to the overall existence of people and their way of life, he urged practitioners to allow their different registration acts to guide their respective mode of conduct.

“The law also establishes three commissions for the purposes of the initiation, perception and implementation of national physical development plans for the federal, state and local government respectively. There are a national urban and regional planning commission; a state urban and regional planning board and a local planning authority.”

Citing several cases and judicial authorities cutting across all levels of court system in Nigeria, including the Supreme Court of Nigeria, he stressed the need for practitioners to follow due process.

“Any person who is not a registered quantity surveyor and holds himself out to practice as a registered surveyor in expectation of a reward or without reasonable excuse takes or uses any title, addition or description implying that he is authorized by law to practice as a registered quantity surveyor and commits further offence stipulated in sections 2 and 3 in respect of procuring registration is guilty of an offence liable on conviction by a high court to a fine not exceeding N1, 000.00 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or both,” he said.

Emphasizing the relevance of law as a matter of discussion as it affects the sector, he called for the built environment professions bill to provide for the establishment of professional bodies to regulate the education and registration of professionals with the built environment industry and to provide for disciplinary measures in respect of professional misconduct by registered persons.

Earlier in his speech, OAU Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Bamitale Omole, had said that the lecture was important for initiating and fostering social and research oriented symbiotic relationships with professionals in the built environment and allied professions.

He charged all stakeholders to join hands with the university in promoting academic renewal, institutionalizing global best practices and vigorously pursuing a win-win relationship with industry and society at large.

On why they organised the lecture, the faculty dean, Prof. Tajudeen Aluko, said it was aimed at depeening academic culture and promoting town-gown symbiotic relationship and raising the bars of academic discourse on important national issues.