Question 1: Sir, can you tell us briefly about yourself; just a short biography?
Answer: My name is Chidiemeka Onuora, the current president of the Nigeria Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers. Before I became president, I was first vice president for two years, second vice president for two years and also secretary for two years. I moved gradually and grew in the profession until I became the national president. I studied in the UK where I obtained my Bsc degree in estate management. I returned to Nigeria in 1985 and joined Knight, Frank and Rutley (the biggest real estate firm in Nigeria). I rose to become an associate partner in 1990. In 1992, I resigned my appointment to set up Emeka Onuorah & Co. where I am the managing partner.
Question: Straight to the heart of the matter, as the NIESV president what are your immediate goals and plans for the institution?
Answer: Well, when I became president, I laid down four-point agenda to the council of which they graciously agreed to implement with me. Basically, any professional association primarily supports its members’ interest. So the first point of call is to ensure that our members are properly served by the institute because many of them feel that the institution is not providing for their welfare by not protecting their interests. So we want to serve the members so that they know that the institution that they belong is concerned about their welfare. Apart from serving our members, the institution is there to serve the public interest, so that is the second-point agenda ‘serve the public interest.’ So that the public will know that we are we are not just for ourselves alone but also for their own interest. If you have been reading dailies lately you will see issues we are taken up on behaviour of the public in respect of property laws introduced by the Lagos state government, and then we also want to train our members because many of our members after their university degree they go into business and after that they think they know it all but we are saying no, that you must continue to train because we are in a dynamic world. The world is moving and technology is coming in by introducing new ways of doing business. So we think our members must move with the world; therefore, we must continue to have professional courses that members would be required to attend from time to time and then we also want to protect our industry. We have had a lot of encroachment on our profession from other professionals like lawyers, architects, surveyors, etc. They think our profession is very lucrative and so some of them feel like they can come in and do whatever they like. We welcome people and we want to make it easy to professional members so we are opening our doors even wider for those who are interested in real estate and valuers to come in and the qualified professionals so that they would become our members. What we don’t like is people doing or attempting to do what they are not professionally trained to do and in the process the public would think we are the ones involved. Also, we want to fight those who are operating like quacks in our profession. These are the four-point agenda that we presented before our council to receive generous approval and we are already implementing some of it.
Question 3: Coming from what you just said, are you saying that there would be a pathway for other professionals like lawyers, architects, surveyors to join the association and has this been implemented or it is still in the drawing board?
Answer: It is not just on the drawing board but it has actually been implemented and it is very interesting that we now found some lawyers applying to become members of our profession. The fact is there, but the only problem is that we have not advertised that part very well for people to know that the service is available and that is what we want to do through our new website. People can go to our website and get all this information without coming to the secretariat or writing to us by way of normal letter but rather they can get to us through our website and whatever is not available there they can get by emailing us and they’ll get their reply within twenty-four hours. So we are putting all these in place to make it easy for people who want to be one of us to come in and even for our members too who require formal training or information to know what is available because we want to now have a training school and we have set up two places, one in Lagos and the other in Abuja and we hope it will start running by early next year. We would have some courses for busy people who cannot go to formal school to gain knowledge even those who are practicing estate agent we want to run courses for them so that they would understand that estate agency is not all commerce affair. It is not just putting a notice or to-let board and wait for people to come but the work could be done professionally and we want to make it as professional as possible.
Question 4: Talking about the website, it is a global tool for reaching the global market, how would your presidency link the real estate industry in Nigeria to the world global village and do you think that this recession that has started in the US would affect Nigeria?
Answer: Thank you, on the issue of property market, we hope to introduce multiple listing service next year. This is a system that is mostly practiced in the US. I believe it will really help a lot when the facility is available so that all our member friends would electronically list the property they have in our system and that way it will also help the Nigerians in Diaspora because they now know that they can get all the property they want and also make enquiry to us or whoever they want from the web directory. By early next year, we should be able to start with this because we do not want to rush things and not be able to get it done professionally. On the other issue of the global financial meltdown, well we are in a global village and Nigeria is not an island and even if it is an island it is being surrounded by water so anything that happens in the water will definitely affect the island. I think Nigeria will be affected but the extent or the impact would not be as it is in the developed world because we are not really tapping much from abroad in developing our real estate sector. I don’t think it will affect us greatly but at least in some other way through credit facilities from the international institutions.
Question5: But what about the concern that by the price of property in Nigeria, because if you are in Nigeria in January and a plot of land is thirty million Naira while in November or December that same plot of land has become sixty million naira? Are you concerned? While income is not going up the increase in values of houses and land maybe artificial since some property values are growing 100 percent within a year?
