Quackery, foreign incursion our biggest challenges – ACAN President

Architect Mansur Ahmadu Kurfi who is the current President of the Association of Consulting Architects of Nigeria (ACAN) in this interview highlights the association’s activities including their achievements and the challenges. Excerpts:   Could you give us a brief overview of ACAN? ACAN was set up with a  view to have a forum of architects […]

Architect Mansur Ahmadu Kurfi who is the current President of the Association of Consulting Architects of Nigeria (ACAN) in this interview highlights the association’s activities including their achievements and the challenges. Excerpts:

 

Could you give us a brief overview of ACAN?

ACAN was set up with a  view to have a forum of architects who are in consultancy. We have many architects in Nigeria and we have an umbrella body which is the Nigerian Institute of Architects and we have a regulatory body which is Architects Registration Council of Nigeria (ARCON). This last one is owned by the government, it has its council and it regulates the practice. Ours is a group that feels they are consultants. This is how they make their living. As you know, there are architects who work in government departments, they are civil servants, some teach as lecturers in universities and polytechnics. There are some who do other things to earn a living. But this is an organisation for people who are in consultancy in the field of architecture.

Its major aim at the inception was to be able to, firstly, improve the quality of the architects we have  in consultancy. 

What are the achievements recorded by ACAN right from inception?

The first one that we were able to achieve was about this foreign incursion. One of the rare countries that are giving us headache is South Africa.

Because there are many South African businesses in Nigeria, when they are coming to construct their facilities, they bring their consultants with them. We have been fighting and we have achieved some success in that regard. What we do as soon as we see that, first we collect all the information and send to our regulatory body (ARCON ), because they are the government agents. If they check and see that there is a problem, they can take it up, because they have the power by law to inform the police commissioner to take action. Where we have better success actually, is in the area of capacity building. We have organised quite a number of training programmes and lectures for our members. Sometimes we bring in the manufacturers of some specialist building materials to come and give us lectures during our meetings.

By so doing, we know of new technologies so that our members are educated. Another great achievement is that for the first time we are able to publish a book on Nigerian architecture where certain selected projects were published. 

What are your challenges?

The biggest challenge I can tell you is this issue of quackery which also leads to the issue of building collapse. You will always feel ashamed that somebody will come and say the building was designed by an architect. Yes, but was it supervised by an architect? We know of people who will go and tell an architect to design a house for them.

Once it is done, they will pay you and collect the building plan that they know how to build. People don’t know that this man that designed it is in the better position to supervise its execution. In fact he is in the best position to implement it. There was a place discovered and exposed by our institute, not even by our association, in Rivers State. They found someone that opened a shop where he is selling building plans. A shop just like where you can go and get your children wears.

This man was not even an architect. So the local chapter of our institute discovered that shop. And this thing is coming everywhere.

You will be amazed that in my home state, Katsina, I saw a shop with a banner ‘come and get your building plan here’. When I checked, I found out that the man was a technical officer somewhere before, not an architect or engineer. But as a technical officer, he had worked on building sites, so he knows how to get a building plan, but did not know the implications of what he is doing. 

So, this fight against quackery is one of our major concerns. Of course we are fighting together with our parent body, we can’t abandon them and fight alone.

But we want to  be in the forefront because we are the direct recipients of its consequences.