Adisa Bello, former registrar of the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria, says the council is collaborating with the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission to curb quackery in Nigeria.

Mr Bello stated this in Bauchi on Monday during a public lecture and the launch of a magazine by the final-year students of the Engineering Department at Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi.

According to Mr Bello, COREN has an Engineering Regulatory Monitoring Unit that is visible and operational in 29 states.

“If the unit finds anyone culpable of quackery, the person will be handed over to the ICPC for further prosecution. COREN, with the council for regulation of engineering in Nigeria, started in 1970, and its laws were amended in 1992, 2004, and 2018.

“The specific one I’m referring to is the amendment in 2018, which categorically gave COREN the mandate to prosecute offenders of engineering,” he said.

He warned that anybody who was not a registered practitioner in engineering and practising engineering would be prosecuted by COREN.

“And COREN is doing everything humanly possible to ensure that this is done. COREN currently has a memorandum of understanding with the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, and this commission is doing everything possible to ensure that offenders are prosecuted,” he said.

Mr. Bello, also a lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at ATBU, recounted how a multibillion-naira, 21-storey building collapsed in Lagos, where COREN conducted an investigation. Following this, some engineers were found to be lacking and were handed over to the ICPC for prosecution.

“COREN has an investigative panel, and once this panel establishes that someone is culpable, it takes you to the ICPC and then straight to the court. In my day, we normally wrote examinations for qualifications.

“We have a situation currently where an individual came with a fake result, and we called on the ICPC, and they have done all their investigations and found the person culpable, and right now he is under prosecution,” he said.

The don called on higher institutions and academics to ensure that all engineering programmes were properly accredited by the National University Commission (NUC) and COREN.

In a paper entitled “Smart Cities and the Role of Engineering and Technology in Building the Urban Future,” Ibrahim Ikara, head of the Department of Civil Engineering at ATBU, stated that engineers played a critical role in smart cities.

Mr Ikara said that this could be achieved through the design of modern infrastructure, disaster-resilient systems, and eco-friendly neighbourhoods.

(NAN)