FG called to establish valuation offices in Nigeria

THE Federal Government has been called upon to establish National Valuation offices across the country in order to have adequate and precise valuation information.

The call was made in Bauchi yesterday by the National President of the Nigerian Institution Estate Valuers (NIESV), ESV Rowland Enyinna Abonta in an interview with Journalists during its 2nd National Council meeting held at the Command Guest House.

Rowland Abonta stated that “Our institution is calling on government at Federal and state level to establish National valuation offices and state valuation offices to be headed by Value General both at the federal and state level. The idea is to have a coordinated approach to valuation in Nigeria.”

“Assets are the most valuable thing that government and private sectors uphold so we believe that in the management of the assets, valuation is a very important aspect because we need it for a number of purposes. For instance, the international community talks about international public sector valuers system and of course we need to know on annual basis the value of asset capture in such accounted system that is worldwide adopted as a standard,” he said.

According to him, all states government need to know what their asset base is noting that, “with the valuation of Accountant General of valuers it is possible to establish and capture all that belong to their state. Of course, if they know what their valuers are, that will be a guiding principle for the state to know their real worth in terms of investment.”

He added that “As we know International funding and even local funding requires valuation of valuers of asset to support whoever that may be funding the basis of what asset position is, so for you to access such international funding we need valuation report of the asset or the valuation certificate of the asset. So there is a quite a number of things that the Valuer-General of the nation can accomplish in coordinating government assets management as well as incorporating valuation and updating of records concerning those assets.

“We also need that office to drive revenue generation. In our nation today, real estate is very important in the area of revenue generation for the state to know what rate or tax to charge on properties and without proper valuation, on that property, it will be impossible,” he further said.

“So it is of benefit to economic benefit of our nation for the office of Valuer-General to be established at both national and state level and the institution is calling on the government to do that speedily so that we will be able to harness our asset for the development of our nation,” Abonta said.

He said the focus of the council meeting was to bring together group of professionalism in the institution to make a certain contribution to the real estate sector of Nigeria as major stakeholders in the sector.