ARCON, NIA resolve rift, register 250 architects

There are strong indications that the disharmony between the Architects Registration Council of Nigeria (ARCON) and Nigerian Institute of Architects (NIA) over registration of architects in Nigeria has been resolved.

ARCON’s president, Sir Dipo Ajayi, who disclosed this in Lagos, said the council has so far register more than 250 architects after the resolution of the disagreement.

Before the advent of Dr. Ajayi headed 49-member- council, ARCON and NIA councils have been on loggerhead over the architect qualifying examination.

The chaotic period in the ARCON and NIA councils led to divisions and resulted to many cases in court.

However, this has changed as many of these law suits have been withdrawn. Ajayi noted that resolution was reached after he inaugurated a 20-man- committee made up of council members from both ARCON and NIA to identify those who failed the registration examinations.

According to the 66 –year- old Ekiti born architect, he had promised during his election campaign to unite and bring peace among the councils as well as ensure that ARCON has a befitting office.

He expressed happiness that the rift has been resolved with the registration of over 250 members, some of whom sat and passed the Final I, Finals II and Professional Practice Examination (PPE) and Architects Competence Programme Examination (ACPE).

Explaining how the feat was achieved, the ARCON president said he created a bible for the aggrieved parties for the contested 2016-17-18 examinations, where the names of those involved in examination malpractices were captured.

This, he said, calmed down their agitations leading to amicable resolution of the impasse. On the Higher National Diploma (HND) issue, he said they were excluded from registration because the council feels that they do not have sufficient education background to be licensed as architects.

“In this country, we have the technical and executive lines in Nigeria, when you go to university that is the educative line, when you go to the technical education that is the technical line but unfortunately in Nigeria, we believe you can cross with no price, we have problems of names in Nigeria, you want to be called engineer when you have not fulfill the requirement to be an engineer, we have problem of nomenclature in the countr,” he said.

According to him, people in Nigeria don’t want to accept what they are whereas in other climes it is the middleman power that shakes the economy but here we lay emphasis on paper.

“ We need middle man power more than executive. It is the way our education is being structured and politicized in Nigeria. They are not competent to carry out examination for HND to licence, because we are not degree awarding institution.

“ Before they were sitting for the Final I, Finals II & Professional Practice Examination (PPE) or Architects Competence Programme Examination (ACPE) conducted by the council but we said no, this time, we are not competent to conduct examination for technicians to be licenced.

“ They need to go back to school to ensure that they passed through the necessary classes in order to avoid building collapse and to learn what is design itself for them understand the concept of design, supervision and work delivery.

“ We held a lot of meetings with association and we have told them to withdraw their cases in court, so you can see that there are no more agitations, if you passed you are licenced. The two councils are in harmony today”, he added.