2.2 The Registrar and the Four-Part Register

2.2 The Registrar and the Four-Part Register

Statutory reference: SURCON Act, Cap S18 LFN 2004, sections 7, 8, 14 and 15.

Everything the Act does - registration, discipline, the offence of unlicensed practice, the bar on recovering fees - ultimately keys off a single question: is this name in the register? Sections 7 and 8 make that question answerable in a court.

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1. Appointment and duties of the registrar (section 7)

Section 7(1): the Council shall appoint a fit and proper person to be the registrar for the purposes of the Act. Section 7(2): the registrar shall prepare and maintain, in accordance with rules made by the Council, a register of surveyors.

Section 7(3) fixes the content: the register shall contain the names, addresses, approved qualifications and such other particulars as the Council may specify, of all persons entitled under the Act to be registered as surveyors and who apply in the specified manner to be so registered. Entitlement alone does not put you on the register; an application in the specified manner is required.

Section 7(7) lists the registrar's duties:

• (a) to correct any entry which the Council directs him to correct as having been incorrectly made;
• (b) to make from time to time any necessary alterations to registered particulars;
• (c) to remove the name of any registered person who has died or has ceased to be entitled to be registered; and
• (d) to act as secretary to the Council at all meetings.

The registrar is also, under section 16(5), secretary to the Disciplinary Committee, and under Second Schedule paragraph 10, the person on whom documents required to be served on the Disciplinary Committee or the Investigating Panel are served.

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2. The four parts of the register (section 7(4))

            THE REGISTER (Act s.7(4))
  +---------------------------------------------+
  | First part   | SURVEYORS                    |
  +--------------+------------------------------+
  | Second part  | PUPIL SURVEYORS              |
  |              | (entry marked provisional,   |
  |              |  s.9(6))                     |
  +--------------+------------------------------+
  | Third part   | SURVEY TECHNOLOGISTS         |
  +--------------+------------------------------+
  | Fourth part  | SURVEY TECHNICIANS           |
  +---------------------------------------------+

The order is prescribed and examinable. Note that the Act's cadres are exactly the four cadres for which Part C of the professional examination application form offers separate examinations.

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3. Rules the Council may make (section 7(5) and (6))

The Council may make rules with respect to the form and keeping of the register and the making of entries, and in particular:

• (a) regulating applications for registration and the evidence to be produced in support;
• (b) providing for notification to the registrar by the registrant of any change in his particulars;
• (c) authorising a registered person to have any surveying qualification registered in addition to, or in substitution for, any other qualification so registered;
• (d) specifying the fees payable for entry of names, and authorising the registrar to refuse to enter a name until the fee is paid; and
• (e) specifying anything falling to be specified under the section.

Section 7(6) is a real constraint: rules made for the purposes of paragraph (d) - the fee rules - do not come into force until confirmed by the Minister. The Council cannot unilaterally set registration fees.

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4. Removal for non-response (section 7(8))

A precise, two-stage procedure that candidates frequently garble:

1. The registrar sends by post a registered letter to the registered person at his registered address, enquiring whether the registered particulars are correct, and receives no reply within six months of posting; and
2. on the expiration of that period the registrar sends a second similar letter in like manner and receives no reply within three months of posting.

Only then may the registrar remove the particulars. The proviso preserves discretion: the Council may, for any reason that seems to it sufficient, direct the registrar to restore particulars removed under the subsection.

Six months, then three months, and registered post in both cases - those three details are the question.

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5. Publication and evidential value (section 8)

Section 8(1) imposes duties on the registrar:

• (a) to cause a list of the persons and qualifications in the register to be printed, published and put on sale to members of the public not later than six months from the beginning of the year in which the Act came into force;
• (b) in each subsequent year, to cause to be printed, published and put on sale either a corrected edition of the register or a list of corrections since it was last printed; and
• (c) to cause a print of each edition and of each list of corrections to be deposited at all offices of the Council, kept open at all reasonable times for public inspection.

Section 8(2) supplies the evidential rule. A document purporting to be a print of an edition of the register published under the section by authority of the registrar in the current year - or prints of a previous year's edition together with a current-year list of corrections - is, without prejudice to any other mode of proof, admissible in any proceedings as evidence that any person specified as registered is so registered, and that any person not so specified is not so registered.

That second limb is the one with teeth. The published register proves a negative: it is evidence that a person whose name does not appear is not registered - which is exactly what a prosecution under section 18 needs.

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6. The registrar's certificate (section 14)

Section 14 provides a quicker route than producing a printed edition. A certificate under the hand of the registrar stating that a person was or was not registered at any time or during any specified period, or as to any entry in the register, or as to any act or proceedings of the Council, shall - until the contrary is proved - be sufficient evidence of the matters specified in it.

Compare the two carefully, because they are different instruments: section 8(2) makes the published register admissible as evidence; section 14 makes the registrar's certificate sufficient evidence until rebutted.

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7. Notification to the Institute (section 15)

Section 15 requires the registrar, as soon as practicable after the entry of any person's name in the register or after the removal of such name, to give notice in writing to the Nigerian Institute of Surveyors of the entry or removal, together with all relevant particulars. It is the statutory channel that keeps the regulator and the professional body aligned on who is currently registered.