Nigerian FM Initiative: Making case for national monuments, infrastructure
Worried about the sorry state of national monuments and public sector infrastructure, especially roads, railways, refineries, etc in Nigeria, the Nigeria Facilities Management (FM) Initiative is saying that it is high time government authorities in the country realized the colossal loss the country suffers from the neglect of these facilities.
Nigeria FM Initiative is a budding national body of professionals in the built environment seeking to gather together and galvanise all professionals in facilities management industry with the aim of forming a common platform that will speak for the industry and also advise government on facilities maintenance, preservation and management.
What obtains in the industry at the moment is a fragmented, stand-alone professionals which is not healthy for a profession that is multi-disciplinary. The Initiative believes there isn’t much that could be achieved if they continue as stand-alone professionals.
“Our aim is to create a platform—a national body—and ensure that FM is an officially recognized profession in the country; that it is given its pride of place among other professions. This profession, as much as I know, is a money spinner”, said Stephen Jagun, the Initiative’s steering committee chairman, who spoke to BusinessDay in Lagos recently.
Jagun added that, worldwide, the FM profession is valued in terms of billions of dollars as it generates big income which is why they have decided to drum support from individuals, corporate organizations and the government to grow the industry in Nigeria.
He noted that as a nation, Nigeria has overlooked the management of its facilities, saying that most times, a lot of money is spent on planning to put infrastructure in place, but after that the infrastructure is left to decay and waste away.
“A lot of money is spent to declare projects open, but over three to four years, such projects become shadows of themselves. I want to imagine that people who were there when such national monuments as National Stadium, National Theatre, the refineries, etc were commissioned, if those people were to go back to those facilities today, probably, they will weep”, he noted.
Continuing, he said, “if you look at our roads, barracks, refineries, etc, some of them are appalling. The same thing applies to our airports. It appears nobody is in charge of the management of the facilities. What we have discovered is that we have all been running around individually. There is nobody to interface with the government on these issues, hence the need for this initiative”.
Collins Osayamwen, the steering committee vice chairman, added that the initiative was determined to give the FM profession more visibility. He believes this profession is a missing link in Nigeria which is why there are so many infrastructure projects that are not well cared for.
He also believes that as a profession, FM has a big role to play in nation building. “Every professional within the built environment including architects, engineers, estate surveyors, quantity surveyors, etc, come together to play their respective roles in the delivery of a project, but all disappear after playing such roles. You will not see an architect return to a project after he has finished the design.
“The only professional that is supposed to be at the inception stage, through the entire life cycle to the disposal of a project is the facilities manager. But because the profession lacks recognition, he is not even counted among the building professionals. He is completely not there”, Osayamwen lamented.
He observed that at individual and government level, no provision is made for the maintenance of facilities and that is why we are having the kind of problem we have today with our infrastructure. “The only group that can speak to this situation is a home-grown group like what we are out to create”, he said.
CHUKA UROKO