By Oghenefego Obaebor
THE Rector, Redeemer’s College of Technology and Management, Professor Adedeji Daramola said that collapse of building would be a thing of the past in our country if architects were properly trained and quality materials used.
Daramola, a professor of architecture, trained in Nigeria and abroad, during the maiden matriculation of RECTEM in Ogun State, said many reasons are responsible for the collapse of buildings in the country.
Among other causative agents of building collapse, he identified poor training background, low quality of education, inadequate laboratory and the quality of supervision during construction as major causes.
To forestall building collapse, he urged building engineers and landlords to go for quality materials, querying the numbers of science laboratory we have in the country that could give us the accurate strength of our materials during building construction.
“We need to know the qualities of our supervisors when they are engaged on site. How competent are they and what is the quality of their training background?”
According to him, for us to avoid the collapse of buildings, we need to look inwards for quality training, quality institutions and quality artisans and exposure of supervisors.
Meanwhile, Daramola posited that RECTEM was established to correct so many things in our polytechnics.
Matriculating 52 pioneer students, Daramola said: “I must confess that the Redeemed Christian Church of God has invested heavily in this school. “When I said heavily, I am talking in terms of billions of naira. The General Overseer of the church, Pastor EA Adeboye had a clear concept of what he wanted in terms of the type of quality education that we need.
“We did not just start, it took us four to five years to handle the project. Just about three months ago, we had the licence to commence.
“So, our workshops are well equipped, quality of our training is high and we are not compromising the quality of our students. You don’t need a professor to be a Rector of a -polytechnic, but they went for the best- got a professor to be the rector.
“Adeboye practically dragged me from my former university, Caleb University to this place. If they do not want the best, they would not go for a professor.
“The quality of our training is based on industry focus and practical orientation. Because we are training the middle level manpower, they will eventually be the people that would handle the sites, laboratories, workshops and research institutions.
“They’re the people to be in charge of real side of the economy in terms of productivity. We are training people who will go out as site engineers, as middle level technologists.
“We are talking about computer science and accounting. What we did is to introduce them to practical level. We have re-equipped our laboratory, library, so that anybody that comes around will have access to the real technology.
“National Board for Technical Education, NBTE, acknowledged it. They came three times and when they were not satisfied, we added more equipment. That was why we have not started mechanical engineering until we are set.
“This is one of the private polytechnics in this country that is running full engineering courses from inception.”
Many schools start with computer engineering and electrical. We have started with computer engineering, electrical engineering and any moment from now they will give us the letter for civil engineering.”
