5.2 Charging for Survey Work, Records and the Surveyor's Signature

5.2 Charging for Survey Work, Records and the Surveyor's Signature

Sources: Survey Law ss.4, 5, 16 and 18; Survey Regulations Part V (private applications to the Surveyor-General) and Part VII (survey fees); SURCON Act ss.4, 18 and 20.

A warning before the substance. Figures for a "SURCON Scale of Fees" circulate widely in candidate materials, and they are not published by the Council. Do not quote a tariff you cannot source. Paper VI rewards a candidate who explains where fee-making power sits and how charging is regulated; it does not reward invented numbers.

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1. Where fee-making power actually sits

So the prescribed tariffs that genuinely exist are for services rendered by the State Survey Division, made by the Governor under the Survey Law. Private practice charging is a matter of contract, subject to whatever professional instruments the Council issues under section 4(d) and to the ordinary law.

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2. Private applications to the Surveyor-General (Part V)

A member of the public may apply to the Surveyor-General to have a survey executed by the Survey Division. Part V of the Regulations governs the process:

• Regulation 41 prescribes the information required on the application.
• Regulation 42 gives the Surveyor-General discretion to investigate or refuse the application. The citizen has no automatic entitlement to a departmental survey.
• Regulations 43 and 45 govern assessment of charges, and regulation 46 the cost of investigation - so an applicant may incur cost even where the survey does not proceed.
• Regulation 44 provides for the attendance of the applicant, which in practice means attending to point out the boundary claimed.

Under section 16 of the Survey Law, any sum due under the Law may be sued for and recovered by the Director, the Surveyor-General or a person authorised, by action in any court of competent jurisdiction.

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3. The economics of unlicensed practice

Two provisions do the work, and they are civil rather than criminal in their most effective operation.

SURCON Act section 20. "A person other than a fully registered surveyor shall not be entitled to recover, by process of law, fees or other valuable consideration whatsoever in respect of any act, matter or thing done or omitted to be done by him pursuant to any contract while purporting to act as a registered surveyor."

Survey Law section 5. A person who practises or professes to practise the profession of surveying, not being a surveyor, is liable on conviction to a fine of five thousand naira in respect of each transaction, and shall not be entitled to sue in any court for remuneration in respect of a survey, plan, map or diagram made by him.

The combined effect is that an unregistered operator works without an enforceable right to be paid, and faces a per-transaction fine. Add section 3 of the Survey Law - the plan is unregistrable and, save for good cause shown, inadmissible - and the product itself is close to worthless. That analysis is a far better Paper VI answer on "how does the law address quackery" than a recitation of the criminal penalties in section 18 of the SURCON Act.

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4. What a signature means

Section 3 of the Survey Law is short, and it is the reason a surveyor's signature has value:

• No plan accepted for registration with a registrable instrument unless prepared and signed by a surveyor;
• No plan admitted in evidence, save for good cause shown to the court, unless prepared and signed by a surveyor, or certified by a surveyor as a true copy.

The signature is therefore not a formality but the statutory act that gives the document its legal effects. Three consequences follow directly:

1. Signing work you did not direct is signing a legal warranty you cannot support. The plan will be registered and may be admitted in evidence on the strength of the signature.
2. Certifying a copy is a distinct professional act. Regulation 38 governs certificates on copy plans, and section 3 makes a certified copy admissible. Certify only what you have compared with the original.
3. Lending a signature to an unregistered person's work defeats sections 18 and 20 of the SURCON Act. A registered surveyor who does so exposes himself to a direction of the Disciplinary Committee for infamous conduct in a professional respect under section 17(1)(a), and there is no ceiling on the seriousness with which that is treated - the available directions run to striking off.

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5. Records and returns

Record-keeping is a legal obligation, not office hygiene. Collected in one place, the obligations are:

The monthly beacon return in regulation 14, including the nil return, is the most frequently overlooked item on that list and one of the easiest examination marks to earn.

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6. Charging in practice: what a defensible answer says

If asked how a surveyor should determine his fee, a strong answer covers:

• the basis of engagement - a written instruction defining the parcel, the purpose, the deliverables and the datum and belt to be used;
• the statutory work that must be done regardless - archive search under regulation 39, connection to control under regulation 4, demarcation to regulation 10, plan to regulations 30-31, deposit under section 4 - none of which is optional and all of which has a cost;
• the prescribed departmental fees under Part VII of the Regulations, which set a public reference point for comparable work;
• the risk carried, since the signature exposes the surveyor to liability for a document that will be relied on for decades; and
• the professional constraint that the Council regulates practice in all its ramifications under section 4(d), so any instrument the Council issues on charging binds the practitioner.

What such an answer avoids is a fabricated national tariff table.