Real estate practitioners have emphasised the need for education and collaboration among sectors from the developers, regulators, and surveyors to artisans, to tackle the rising cases of building collapse in the country.
The experts disclosed this at the 2nd edition of the Unleashed 4 Takeover Real Estate Conference event held in Lagos Nigeria on Tuesday May 2, 2023.
Ichechi Okonkwo, CEO Victoria Crest homes said that education is very key in bringing up professionals to develop and construct quality buildings.
“The major gap in building is education. If you want to build a quality house or city, you need professionals and to be a professional, everyone needs to learn. Apart from knowledge, it is important that everyone plays their part and stops cutting corners. Everyone in the sector needs to come and play their part to curb this rising case of building collapse,” She said.
According to her, the issues in the construction sector require a joint effort and not only the government. “The private sector must do their part, developers, surveyors, regulators and Artisans.”
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The CEO also said that real estate being an open market is one of the reasons it faces some challenges, which does not necessarily have to be a disadvantage to the sector.
“We can play it to our advantage by making sure that we get the right knowledge. If we have the technical knowhow, there is no way we will fail, expertise is very important and so when we converge here we bring experts from different areas to share their experience, so everyone will learn and benefit from the conference, then go back to practice and upgrade their own level.”
Speaking on the quality of building materials, the convener of the conference, Kennedy Okonkwo, Managing Director, NedComOaks Group warned construction experts to desist from buying substandard iron while extending the message to Standard Organization of Nigeria (SON) and other regulators.
“I am sending this message to the Standard organisation of Nigeria (SON) and regulator of the real estate industry. Most of the iron being sold in the industry is not complete gadge. The result is planning to fail. When you have a full gadge of iron being sold for 530,000 and you have some people selling iron for 435,000, then you need to check them very well.
“And organisations producing it are being monitored by SON. Let them go and check all those iron companies. Indians and Chinese people will not come here and produce iron that is killing Nigerians. It is unacceptable. What they cannot do in their country, let them not do it here,” Okonkwo said.
Meanwhile, the event according to the organisers aims helps to bring together industry experts to help empower and build connection and networking platform needed to succeed in the industry as professionals both as players and partners to push the industry and ensure it continues to prosper
The second edition recorded over 20 speakers and panelists with over 8000 attendees both physical and online.
