Members of the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV) who are worried with inappropriate activities within the institution’s electoral system have gone to court seeking interpretation of the letters of the 2018 EGM Resolutions.
The concerned members explained in a statement in Lagos at the weekend that the court action became necessary after they had exhausted all internal mechanisms to bring sanity and objectivity into their electoral system by ensuring that the electoral committee complied with the binding resolutions of the 2018 EGM.
“Our objectives in taking this action is to ensure that our activities as a responsible professional body are guided by the rule of law , and that our elections are conducted in an atmosphere devoid of votes manipulation and other electoral malpractices and rigging, which could injure our interests as bonafide members of the institution, the statement signed by Sola Fatoki on behalf of the Petitioners, explained.
Fatoki said the action was not a declaration of war but one taken to establish the true status of their EGM resolutions in that regard, believing that the little inconvenience that action might cause the institution as a body would be more than compensated by the long term clarity and dispute removal that would eventually result from its resolution.
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The concerned members recalled that 12 financial members cutting across all cadres from associates to fellows had, in a letter dated March 14, 2022, raised concern about the conduct of their 2022 elections with suspected violation of certain resolutions (concerning the appointment of reputable IT firm) of the 2018 EGM Resolutions.
They recalled too that the chairman of the electoral committee replied the letter denying that no IT firm had been appointed then.
Following the discovery of another clandestine election activities by the suspected IT firm known as Nexusmax, the concerned members said they wrote another letter insisting on absolute compliance with 2018 EGM Resolutions as ratified at the 2019 AGM.
This letter, they lamented, was ignored by the electoral committee.
“Again, efforts made to call for EGM by 165 members to resolve the 2018 EGM resolution disobedience, was stopped on technical ground after some members were reportedly threatened, leading to insufficient number of Fellows required for calling the EGM,” Fatoki recalled.
He noted that the Council meeting of April 23, 2022 held in Port Harcourt also resolved that Electoral Committee should comply with the EGM 2018 Resolutions, adding that further intervention by the Committee of past Presidents of the institution led by Papa Adetola Shote was ignored, just as several other appeals by other noble colleagues simply went unheeded, hence the court action.
“We, therefore, plead for your understanding as we discharge this duty in the interest of our institution’s progress,” the concerned members said.
