The Minister of Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, Monday inaugurated a new 12- member board of the Town Planners Registration Council of Nigeria (TOPREC) with a call on its members to enforce the town planning law to tackle flooding.
Inaugurating the new board which has Tpl. Isiaku Mukhtar Kura as its president in Abuja, Fashola also called on the board to enforce the law prohibiting the erection of structures along the flood plain.
He charged them not only to uphold the standard and guidelines of the profession but raise them because it is only by doing this that the challenges faced in urban planning and development could be sourmmanted.
The minister said the essence of constituting the council was to ensure that the country has a professional council that would in turn ensure that the professional Town Planners are registered as members of the council.
He stated that the twelve members of the new board were representatives of their different states, adding that as more members are appointed from other states, they would join the council in accordance with the law.
In his welcome address, the Permanent Secretary, Bashir Nura Alkali, noted that the presence of well – disciplined and adequately regulated professionals in the built environment, would improve the quality of output of the professionals and invariably contribute to the quality of the environment, construction, infrastructure and national development.
He said TOPREC as a critical agency of government under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing had the statutory mandate to regulate and control the practice of the profession of physical planning in all ramifications in Nigeria.
Alkali revealed that the minister approved the re- constitution of the new members of the council after the expiration of the tenure of the former ones in consonance with the provision of Section 2(1) of the Town Planners Registration Council of Registration (TOPREC) Act 2004.
In his acceptance remark, the president of the council Kura, while encouraging the newly inaugurated members to form a habit to read and meditate on the Act that established the council, explained that being members of the council was a call to service that would involve sacrificing their time and resources.
Kura who conveyed the council’s gratitude to the Minister for the periodic subvention given to it, also informed the Minister that the Council has been able to build a Secretariat at Jahi district in Abuja.
The 12 TOPREC members inaugurated are ; Tpl. (Dr.) Simon Kanobi -Osoww Ajom, Cross River State; Tpl. Danbaba Umar Idris, Niger state; Tpl. Liman Gana, Borno State; Tpl. Ogunlewe Adebisi Adesoga, Lagos state; Tpl. Aniekan Ubong Akpan, Cross River; Tpl. Davies Tonte Joseph, Rivers State; Tpl. Aliyu Abubakar Mohammad, Jigawa state; and Tpl. Ogbugo Victor Filzgerald representing Delta state.