'Topography critical to building approval'

Mr. Ropo Olajugba, Managing Director of Lordfield Limited, a firm of surveyors and Geographical information consultants, in this interview with Dayo Ayeyemi, explains the relevance of survey towards homeownership and orderly physical development. Excerpts:

As a built environment practitioners, what do you think can be done through survey to mitigate against indiscriminate building constructions on road setbacks and drainage channels in Lagos?
The issue is about development control. It a policy matter. It is an engineering problem. It is the policy that you use to support technical matters. For example, in the approval process, before you can build your house you must show the setbacks from the road.

It is the survey that would show where the road is located; and if you bring your survey, they would chart it on the base map so show that you are not designing to fall on the road. Going further, before you build your house, you should also be asked to provide further information that would show the topography of the area.

Are you going to dig or you are going to fill? If for example, if your land falls in the same street with mine and you go ahead to fill your land one meter ahead of me, you have created a valley and when rain falls, my house will be a water collection point.

Those things are not yet in the approval process. But what is important to government in the approval process is that you don’t claim my land and the land meant for public purpose. It should go further to show the engineering properties. If the approval process ensures that somebody does not builds on the road; he does not build skyscrapers where he is suppose to build bungalow, it should also ensure that someone cannot fills beyond reasonable points. What I am saying is that topography details should be part of the approval process.

How relevance is survey to home ownership in Nigeria?
The only way you can show that you own land is through the survey plan. The surface of the earth is only defined by the survey. Every point on the surface of the earth has what we call a unique coordinate system.

The coordinate system defines both the bearing and distance; and when it is defined, no two points on the earth has the same coordinates. There is longitudinal coordinate, there is latitudinal coordinate, which ever you use, it is the surveyor that would define that this has coordinates x and y. And by defining it, you can now give it a name.

That is the name of the owner. Usually you will notice that when you see a survey, it does not say that this land is owned by my X, but it is said to be owned by X. That is why surveyors are called expert witness. Surveyors are not like lawyers who argue your case, but we will tell you what, where and when you need to complete your title document. Survey is one of the documents that actually define who the owner of land is. If you have a land and I have a land in two different locations, it cannot have the same coordinates or survey unless there is an error.

So, owing land is synonymous with survey and owing a house is synonymous with owing a land. For any development work being it road, pipeline, electricity and building or whatever you want to develop, as long you want to develop it on the land, you need survey. Survey that defines title is what we call cadastral; and in the government office we have a cadastral register which shows Mr. A has a Land In Maryland and another has a land in Onigbongbo, another one has in Anthony Village.

There is another survey we called engineering work which defines the topography of the land. That is one land is one kilometer ahead of the sea level and another one is two metres below sea level. If you want to know if water would flow from point A to Point B; and you what to know the height of points A and B, that is also survey work.

So, survey does not only precedes construction, it is the first thing you do to determine title and the location. When you say that you have 500 hectares of land and a right-of-way of pipeline from here to Escavor; it is the survey that would determine these.

During construction proper, you also need to know what the topography is; you also need to know the relationship between points A and B. That is engineering design.

How affordable is surveying service?
Surveying service is very affordable. If you look the importance of survey information and data to construction work, particularly housing, you will find out that how much is the surveyor charging? For example, I do not know any virgin land in Lagos that costs less than N500,000,00 . If you use N100,000,00 to determine what to critically tell you whether you own land or not, I don’t think it is too much.

Actually it is the survey that would tell you that you have land. If you like, pay to anybody, it is the paper that you have that would determine if you have land. When there is a dispute, it is the survey plan that you would take to court.

So the issue of affordability is very relative; and I will concur and tell you that it is affordable. It is a reality that you must have a survey plan. The reality is not about affordability but about the service. Is the service good?

During the construction proper, you want to know the engineering properties of what you are building. The survey work is also critical when you are building for large areas. For example you want to build the road network, the drainage and that is why you find some of the Government Reservation Areas (GRAs) well planned. You will never found pool of water on the road in the GRAs.

In the past in Ikoyi, you would never find pool of water on the road after a heavy downpour but in places that are not planned like Ipaja, and Somolu, you discover that they have drainage problem. The bulk of the communities and land in Lagos are not planned and people just build anyhow.