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From Adline Elechi, Abuja
Council for the Registration of Engineers (COREN) has trained over 200 building collapse investigators in Nigeria.
Speaking to jornalists yesterday on the 34th Engineering Assembly scheduled on July 14 and 16, 2026, President of COREN, Professor Sadiq Abubakar said that COREN was going to organise more advanced training for the investigators to bolster their competencies. “When you have building collapses, the first group you need are investigators, and so we now have a critical mass of this category in Nigeria, about 200 plus, and we are going to organise advanced training so that we can firm their competencies in doing this very important assignment for the nation.
“We have also recorded the training of what we call evaluators of engineering programme, about 837 evaluators drawn from the industry and trained.
In his remarks, the registrar of COREN, Professor Okorie Austine, explained that funding is one of the hindrances in the council.
According to him, as a regulatory body, funding is one of the things that inhibits the council from enforcement.
“We have seen a lot of things that are happening in the regulatory ecosystem. It’s not that the laws are not there, but the enforcement and there are also things we see as things that are making us not to go the mileage we want to and you can agree with me, it’s funding. Just like Mr.President said, funding is one of our headaches.
“If we are to be serious, we have to deepen the regulatory advocacy. We can contend with all other people in the regulatory environment and that is what in our own thinking that we decided to do and that is the best way to go.
We don’t want to say we will do it alone” he said.
He said that when there is a building collapse, the burden is on engineers, but it’s mostly on construction and design.
“The burden is on engineers because once you hear
collapse, the next thing is Nigerian engineers, not knowing that it’s not only engineers that are in
the construction industry. These are some of the things that we have” he said.ENDS
