The Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) has called for a stronger engineering regulatory regime to tackle quackery, improve public safety and prevent infrastructure failures, saying the country must move from reactive to preventive regulation.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of the 34th COREN Engineering Assembly in Abuja on Tuesday, COREN President, Prof. Sadiq Zubair Abubakar, said the council had intensified compliance monitoring, enforcement and digital reforms to strengthen engineering practice across the country.
The assembly, with the theme, “Advancing Public Safety in Nigeria through Strategic Engineering Regulation, Enforcement and a Tiered Sanction Regime,” brought together engineering professionals, policymakers, regulators and industry stakeholders.
Abubakar said engineering regulation was fundamentally about protecting lives, property and the environment.
“Public safety is the ultimate measure of engineering success. Every road we design, every bridge we construct, every building we certify, every power system we operate, every pipeline we install and every industrial facility we supervise carries an implicit obligation to protect lives, property and the environment,” he said.
He added that engineering regulation must go beyond ensuring professional competence to include “robust mechanisms for compliance monitoring, enforcement, accountability and sanctions where necessary.”
Highlighting the council’s achievements over the past year, Abubakar said COREN secured endorsement from the National Universities Commission (NUC) and approval from the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) to enforce admission quotas for engineering programmes in Nigerian universities, similar to medicine, law and pharmacy, to improve training quality and graduates’ practical competence.
He also said the council had reintroduced the oath-taking and indexing of engineering graduates, as well as the mandatory one-year Engineering Residency Programme (ERP) for degree and Higher National Diploma graduates before the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), in line with global best practices.
On enforcement, the COREN president said the council had expanded engineering monitoring and compliance inspections across major infrastructure projects, industrial facilities and construction sites nationwide.
According to him, COREN inaugurated five regional offices, 22 State Technical Committees and 22 Engineering Monitoring Committees to strengthen regulatory oversight, while also training and certifying 239 Engineering Failure Investigation (EFI) investigators to handle cases involving engineering failures and unsafe practices.
He said the council had also digitalised its registration, licensing and verification processes, enabling remote verification of engineering practitioners and firms from anywhere in the world.
Abubakar further disclosed that COREN trained and certified 668 engineering programme implementers in universities and polytechnics and 839 evaluators drawn from industry and academia to assess the quality of engineering education across the country.
He added that the council had established 11 sectoral committees to develop engineering codes and standards, while safety guidelines for the construction sector had already been developed and guidelines for roads and bridges were awaiting national validation.
On international recognition, he said the International Engineering Alliance (IEA) had appointed three reviewers to assess the alignment of Nigeria’s university engineering programmes with global Washington Accord standards, alongside two mentors to support Nigeria’s admission into international accords for polytechnic engineering programmes.
Despite the progress, Abubakar identified persistent activities of unregistered practitioners, weak compliance with engineering standards, inadequate funding for monitoring, delays in prosecuting engineering misconduct and poor maintenance culture as major challenges facing the profession.
He also cited emerging technologies, cybersecurity concerns, climate-related infrastructure risks and rapid urbanisation as new pressures requiring stronger regulatory capacity.
“The future of engineering regulation lies not only in detecting failures but in preventing them. We must therefore move from reactive regulation to predictive and preventive engineering governance,” he said.
Declaring the assembly open on behalf of President Bola Tinubu, the Minister of Works, David Umahi, said the Federal Government remained committed to strengthening engineering regulation as part of efforts to improve public safety.
Representing the President, Umahi described COREN as “a public safety institution” and stressed that regulation was “not punishment but protection.”
“Regulation protects the public from incompetence. It protects government from waste. It protects investors from failed infrastructure and, most importantly, it protects lives,” he said.
He assured Nigerians that the Tinubu administration would continue to deliver durable roads and bridges, noting that current federal highway projects were designed to last between 50 and 100 years.
“We are determined to build roads and bridges that serve Nigerians for generations. No bridge, no road, no building or infrastructure project is more important than the lives it is meant to serve,” Umahi added.
