Estate Surveyors and Valuers in the country have been urged to do everything in their practice to promote activities that will increase urbanisation and ones that will discourage cities slum.
Niji Raji, Chairman, Raden Investment Ltd. while speaking at the Investiture of the 26th Chairman and Executive Committee Members of the Lagos Chapter of the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV) in Lagos recently called on real estate surveyors and valuers to be more proactive in influencing measures that would facilitate proper urbanisation of the country.
Raji said that many cities of the country were rapidly becoming slum zones due to poor attitude to planning and urban renewal. He noted that the physical conditions of most areas in Lagos State, which have been abandoned to swamp, can be upgraded to harbour residents through the help of the estate surveyors.
According to him, estate surveyors can influence urban policies and promote strategies that would specifically respond to the urbanisation challenges. “They can as well, create an advocacy group with strong government political action committee to influence effective urban planning policies.
“I fully appreciate the agenda for the next two years of this branch particularly in the area of strategic partnership. We are all aware that in the recent past, we have seen the growth of public private partnerships in real estate development which I believe is a very welcome development. However, some of our urban centres are rapidly becoming slums because of lack of proper planning. Therefore, I will suggest that this branch should create, if you do not already have one, an advocacy group.
“The mission of the group will be to protect the real estate industry and, of course, your livelihood.But more importantly, a strong political action committee with effective lobbying with the state government including proposing legislative reviews in key areas of the industry. It is in this area that I believe NIESV, Lagos Branch, should have a standing advocacy group with the Lagos State government to influence urban policies and promote strategies that specifically respond to the urbanisation challenges of today,” Raji said.