Dr. Olusola Atilola is the president of Nigerian Institution of Surveyors (NIS). In this interview with Olaniyi Ola, he bares his mind on the land reform, collapse building, quackery in the industry among bother topical issues.

Unveiling of new brand identity
At the inception of our administration, we promised that we are going to do a rebranding of the institution. We want the public to identify the product that is the “Nigerian surveyors”. Hitherto not many people know who is a surveyor, what they do and their contributions to national development.
All what people know is that surveyor is the person who measures plots of land. They don’t know that we do more. They don’t know that there is no development in which surveyors input are not required.
They don’t know that there cannot be sustainability of the environment without the input of surveyors. Any development involves land and therefore you must ensure that particulars of the land you want to develop is known for proper planning.
What we are saying is that we want the surveyor to be known. We want to create a particular specific product by which the surveyors should be known. The logo that we had before can not be easily understood by the public. We are not totally dropping the old logo.
There was just an improvement so that the common man can easily identify with it. That unveiling of the logo is part of the series of the rebranding that we are talking about. And if we are talking about rebranding, then there must be something you have to identify that brand with. We also had caps, jackets that we are going to be wearing when we go to site, so that when we see surveyors on site, you can easily identify him.

Estate surveying versus land surveyors
We have three types of surveyors. We have the estate surveyors, quantity surveyor and land surveyors. However, because of the fact that we, as land surveyors, do not deal with land alone, we try to remove the adjective land in the sense that our work involves on land, on the surface of the sea and also we work from the air. We map with photographs and also satellite imagery.
When we say land surveyor, it means people working on land.  A land surveyor is a professional who has been trained and has the technical knowledge to measure points of the earth surface, on the sea surface and below the sea surface, from the air and from space in order to locate points on the earth surface and depicts such points on maps or use the points’ determinations for other purposes.

Advocacy for land reforms
The issue of land reform is a thing that is very paramount and of interest to all Nigerians. In 1978, the government promulgated the Land Use Decree. And the decree says all land is vested in the state governor. This means to hold it in trust for the people.
Before the Land Use Decree we had a system whereby land belonged to the people. We had customary right. We also had the statutory right of occupancy. So, these things are together but all of a sudden the government then said and that all land belonged to governor just because speculators were making it difficult for government to purchase land for development.
But the 1978 decree has not worked because government failed to take proper care of the necessary prerequisite for the decree. For a land Use Decree you need to have the maps. There are no maps for the country. So, it was difficult for this decree to be implemented because they do not know the land which the decree applies to. The decree talked about urban land and rural land but there were no maps to show the demarcation between the rural land and urban land and therefore this decree was concentrated mainly on the urban areas which is less than three per cent of the total land area of Nigeria which is about million square kilometer.
The remaining 97 per cent were locked up. The issue of Certificates of Occupancy (Co of O) was concentrated only on urban areas. Sometimes, the governors used these powers arbitrarily. It could be for political opponents, personal interest etc. In other sense, the decree is made is such a way that you have to get a governor’s consent before you deal in your land, after you have been given your C of O.
So, even when you have your C of O, it doses not guarantee you the security of the land you have because the governor can revoke it anytime. Such a land tenure system was affecting the economy of the country adversely.
The NIS and many professional bodies have already advocated that the Land Use Decree should be reviewed, so that we can have something that is dynamic and can serve the generality of Nigerians whereby people will have equal access to land. What the Land Use Decree was doing was to take land from the common man and then distribute it too the rich, and then government is making money out of the land and the people that owned the land are impoverished. It is unjust. The Land Use Decree was an unjust act. We, as surveyors, embrace the Yar’Adua government Seven-point Agenda in totality including the land reform.
The ideal is to go beyond the urban land that is been affected, expand it and ensure that the common man’s right to land is determined and documented, whether it is in the village or the urban area. That it is going to determine the possessive right of every Nigerian and when that reform comes up, then every Nigerian, wherever you have the land be identified and be given one form of certificates or the other. That will enable such owners to use that document as collateral to take loans and that will empower the common man.
Before this can be effectively done, we need to map the country properly. It when we do this that we will be able to identify each parcel of land that belongs to every Nigerian and then you can register the land. It going to very capital intensive, however, if government is to deliver on the land reform, agenda, then, the Federal Government must map the nooks and crannies of this nation properly.
There are other benefits of the maps. Apart from using the map for land reform, once you map an area, other sectors of the economy can then add value to it. What we do in this country is purpose mapping. Each ministry do mapping that suit what they want to at that particular moment.
However, once we map the country properly and we review it frequently at required intervals, then the country will safe trillions of naira which is being used now to duplicate mapping. That is why we encourage government to fund the office of the surveyor general, so that it can carry out this project in partnership with the private sector.

Mapping
In the past, it used to take a very long time to produce maps. However, with current technology, it could be done within three to four years, if the funding is adequate.
Lagos state mapping is perhaps the most ambitious in the country so far. It is a very large scale digital mapping driven by GIS. By the time the project is completed, the state will be the better for it. I am sure that by two or three years, the cost of producing the map will be recovered. If you want to do anything in the state you most produce the map and that must be purchased.
So, the Lagos State mapping is quite extensive, it is GIS based and will be reviewed from time to time to solve the problem of Lagos. It is because Lagos State has embarked on this map that the government is able to take a holistic look into the Lagos State mega city status, as it is hitherto very difficult to plan. You cannot plan without maps.

Eradicating cases of building collapse
The issue of collapsed building is the collective responsibility of all professionals in the built industry. No professional should think it has the monopoly of knowledge.
The professionals should have internal checks on their colleagues to sanitise the sector. We will all contribute in our areas of professional competence. The planner should not plan without appropriate survey, I mean the boundary survey and the topographical survey. And once these areas are identified, you can plan. In the past, people have planned without topographical map and they assumed that the land is flat. Plots are located on drainages, river courses, gullies and swampy areas.
Once this is done, the owners go there and start to build without taking account of the nature of the land. Before the engineer can design, he needs to have a topographical map of the area and the size. If buildings are high rise buildings there is a need for monitoring.
Also builders, architects all have a part to play. There must be proper supervision and we must ensure that people do not cut corners. To avoid building collapse in the future each professional must play his part. We a surveyors, we have parts to play so that we could ensure an ideal environment and ensure that the necessary inputs are made before erection of building.