The Nigerian Institute of Architects has urged the Federal Government to do more by patronising locally made building materials.
The first vice-president of the institute, Mobolaji Adeniyi, made this known while speaking with journalists at the Archibuilt exposition held in Abuja on Friday.
According to her, the government policy on local content would be ineffective without patronising professionals who are making strides in sourcing local building materials
She said, “The government has to do more in patronising Nigerian architects and local building materials.
“If the government is putting so much into training professionals; it should be using its professionals. We are looking forward to competitions where major and iconic buildings will be thrown open to the Nigerian architects to show our expertise
“Before that we have been advocating; we have a lot of incursions of foreign professionals on our turf. Many of our iconic buildings in Nigeria are designed by expatriate engineers which ought not to be so.
“We don’t always have to bring in foreign architects to design buildings that have sensitive security issues; we must make sure that it’s our own professionals that are designing them. We now have the local content policy which means the government should be patronising its professionals.’’
Meanwhile, the Vice-Chancellor of Bingham University, Prof. William Qurix has charged architects to help solve the housing deficits in the country by creating suitable designs for mass housing.
