COREN to Sue MDAs that Award Contracts to Non-members

Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) has cautioned Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in Nigeria to avoid awarding construction contracts to quacks and unregistered engineers, that they are set to institute legal actions against them when they are discovered.

Engr. Olumuyiwa Ajibola, chairman of COREN Investigative Panel, blamed collapse of buildings in different parts of the country, on construction work done by quacks or fake engineers, saying that to put an end to collapse of buildings, MDAs should be mindful of companies they award construction contracts to, by ensuring that they are registered professional engineers.

According to Ajibola who made this known during the investigative panel seating yesterday, said COREN had sent people to the Judicial Tribunal set up by COREN Acts and they have been sanctioned, by suspending them from practice for ten years, while some of them were recommended for prosecution, depending on what the Tribunal found against them.

He appealed to members of the public to be aware of many quacks in the system, that only people registered with COREN are professional, saying that the biggest offence in the engineering profession is for people to say that they are engineers when they are not registered with COREN.

“Why we are advicing the public, is for us to deal with erring engineers when they are reported, and we can only deal with those that are registered with us. COREN is educating the various MDAs on the issue of giving jobs to those consulting firms that are not registered members.

“What we are likely to be doing through our legal department is to take them to court for infringing on COREN law, because they cannot claim ignorant of the law. We are going to go through our legal system to fight with those that deliberately choose to violate the COREN law, by giving jobs to unregistered companies.

“The biggest offence is for people to say that they are engineers when they are not registered with COREN. Only those that are registered with us are the ones we can deal with, that is why we are advicing the public to always report every erring engineer for us to deal with them for incompetent, for fraud, for negligence or any other act that the public might think is not befitting for a professional,” he said.