Ministry to facilitate registration of expatriate builders

The Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, has promised that the immigration section of his ministry would ensure that building expatriates coming into the country would be duly registered with the Nigerian Institute of Building (NIOB) and licensed by the appropriate regulatory body, the Council of Registered Builders of Nigeria (CORBON).

The minister who disclosed this during a recent meeting with leaders of the NIOB in his office in Abuja said the federal government was collaborating with building professionals to uphold standard in the building industry.

Earlier, the National President of the NIOB, Kunle Awobodu, hinted that NIOB had earmarked 13th of March as Builders’ Day, the day a five- storey building collapsed at No 63, Massey Street on the Lagos Island, killing over 20 people, who were mostly school children.

According to Awobodu, the Builders’ Day, which would be an annual event would commence this year 2020. It would be a nationwide sensitisation campaign against substandard building construction.

Responding, Aregbesola said the ministry would collaborate with the NIOB to train artisans in building and also to ensure standardisation of all materials being used in building construction so as to avert the frequent incident of building collapse across the country, which he said had claimed the lives of many Nigerians.

He urged the Institute to help provide building skills at the correctional centres where inmates could be engaged in more productive activities, as well as generating income for themselves and the country.