If properly funded, the construction sector has great potential for the country and could deliver mass housing, hence this is a call for proper research funding to boost infrastructure in Nigeria.
There is the need for citizens and those involved in construction projects across the country to make use of local materials to promote indigenous production.
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At a roundtable, organised by CPTA recently in Abuja with the theme ‘Harnessing the Gains/Challenges of the Nigeria Building and Road Research Institute in the Face of Economic Downturn’, the NBRRI was identified as the centre of national development, as it carries out research on local raw materials for building roads, bridges and houses.
This helps in making shelter available to the common man because housing is a major human need.
NBRRI works to guarantee safe housing so whenever there is a building collapse it checks the sample of materials used and tests them to ascertain what could have caused the collapse.
However, most research institutes, including NBRRI, need proper funding because there is no research you carry out that is useless.
So the federal government should put more funds into research because it is at the centre of human life.
There is the need for expediting action on the NBRRI bill to make it more independent and reduce bureaucracies in carrying out its functions.
For a country struggling with issues of high levels of youth unemployment, we need to make more investment in scaling up our young ones to take up roles in the sector, while developing local techniques for building in our peculiar environment.
This prompted our beaming the searchlight on NBRRI to question whether there has been any technological discovery with the capacity to revive the nation’s construction sector.
This quest had made the Centre for Peace, Transparency and Accountability (CPTA) to embark on an independent assessment tour to all parts of the country to see a practical demonstration of the products of NBRRI’s research.
CPTA has documented the outcome in a report and this would serve as reference material on the activities and operations of NBRRI, outlining home-grown, cost-effective and qualitative solutions for sustainable national development.
We have no doubt that NBRRI has the potential to help diversify the Nigerian economy and engage more of our youth productively, while creating, keeping and growing the wealth of our citizens exponentially over time.
In the light of this, we are calling on all stakeholders to give greater consideration to the conscious development of our construction sector.
We wish to therefore call on the Presidency to make it a policy that all procurements by the federal MDAs adopt a minimum of 50 per cent local technologies in construction.
Government should incorporate research outputs from NBRRI as a requirement for its public-private partnership (PPP) and tax credit programmes.
The private sector should commit more to adopt NBRRI research outputs to deliver housing at affordable rates for Nigerians.
And northern state governments need to reach out to NBRRI to build collaboration in ensuring that its research works were used in infrastructure development at sub-national levels.
Patrick Ogheneyero, Executive Director, Centre for Peace, Transparency and Accountability (CPTA)
