Nigeria's Council for Regulation of Engineering plans development of Engineering Code

The Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) says Nigeria plans to develop a Nigerian Engineering Code that will help it to fabricate its local technology.

Mr Kashim Ali, the President of the council, made this known in Abuja on Thursday.

An Engineering Code is the area of applied ethics and system of moral principles that guide the practice of engineering by examining and setting the obligations of engineers to society, clients, and to the profession.

"We have sets of codes; there is no code that is on its own not convertible; it’s just that the ease with which you do things in your own country determines how you input your code.

"We can convert any code to whatever to now generate our own codes so that anybody that comes to practice in Nigeria does not need to come with his or her own code.

"If you come with your code, you now have to convert it to the Nigerian code and use the Nigerian code for your design so that there is simplicity of understanding of the process.

"Now what we have is not good for national pride.

"You know we have the German code, the Chinese code, the French code; so any Nigerian engineer who is working in the industry and is working with a special contractor, knows now the German code, he knows the French code and the British code that we use officially.

"But we want to have a Nigerian code which is going to be a fusion of our experiences from all these places; so we will have a robust code."

Ali said that developing a Nigerian code would provide the country with an edge in the engineering sector just as it would curb engineering irregularities in the country and help maintain standards for both foreign and home-based engineers.

He said that COREN would not tolerate a situation where foreign engineers breached the competency assessment guideline in practicing engineering in the country.

He said that the council was collaborating with law enforcement agencies to ensure that engineers who violated the COREN Act were punished regardless of their statuses in Nigeria.

He advised heads of tertiary institutions in the country to desist from perpetuating corruption in their engineering faculties.

"What is corruption in the faculty? If your university is ill-equipped, let the regulating body know the true status of your university so that something can be done.

"Don’t pretend that the equipment is there and then you go and borrow from another university just so you can pass the accreditation test; that is corruption.

"It is fraud and we are going to deal with any higher institution that does that through investigation; we will find out and persecute such schools," he said.

Source - NAN