* Seek greater participation in politics

By Jude Njoku

Quantity surveyors rounded off their 26th biennial conference in Lagos weekend, with the inauguration of Mrs Mercy Torkwase Iyortyer as the first female president of their professional body -the Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors, NIQS. She will, for the next two years, preside over the new executive council of the Institute which has a former Lagos State Chairman of the Institute, Mr. Obafemi Onashile as Deputy President.

Onashile defeated three other contestants to emerge as the second in command while the former Secretary, Professional Development and Library, Dr. Ejike Anunike was returned as the Vice-President of the Institute.

For five days, the Lagos Oriental Hotel along the Lekki -Epe express road, was a beehive of activities as quantity surveyors abandoned their offices and construction sites to brainstorm on Politics, policies and national development -the role of professionals.

Declaring the biennial conference open, the Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, who is a Fellow of the NIQS, enjoined the construction cost experts to take active part in politics in order to influence policies affecting the country and the construction industry.
el-Rufai who was represented by Kaduna State Commissioner of Works, Alhaji Hassan Usman, an engineer, explained that the uncommon transformation going on in Kaduna State today, was made possible by the visionary leadership of a quantity surveyor.

In his own remarks, the Secretary to the Kano State Governor who is also a quantity surveyor, Alhaji Suleiman Bichi, enjoined construction cost experts to take more than passive interest in the governance of the country. By actively participating in politics, he said they would be able to positively influence the policies of government.

Immediate past president of the Institute, Mallam Murtala Aliyu said the choice of the conference theme was “informed by the way and manner professionals as collectives, disregard the consequences of ignoring politics, leaving things as important as the fundamental aspect of their survival in the hands of persons with little or no capacity to handle such sensitive enterprise”.

“If one takes a census of the leadership of political parties especially at the sub-national levels, one is likely to find the quality of the occupants of those positions unacceptable. These persons determine the agenda upon which our party politics are based and also determine the emergence leadership at all levels,” Aliyu who is a former Minister of State, in the Ministry of Power and Steel, said.

Although many quantity surveyors have occupied top political positions in the country, the former NIQS boss said “politics to quantity surveyors and indeed other professionals, is not a new frontier.

“What will be new is the deliberateness of the persons involved to be conscious of the role they aught to play in the affairs of the nation and to humanity based on their callings”.

Others who spoke at the opening ceremony included the President of Commonwealth Association of Surveying and Land Economy, CASLE, Mr Olusegun Ajanlekoko, that of Quantity Surveyors Registration Board of Nigeria, QSRBN, Mallam Husaini Dikko and the President of the Africa Association of Quantity Surveyors, AAQS.