The leadership of the Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors has paid glowing tribute to the deceased former President of the body, Mr. Emmanuel Chukwuemeka Oforeh, who died on December 30, 2012 and was buried on January 17, 2013.
In his tribute, the current President, NIQS, Mr. Agele Alufohai, described the deceased as a consummate professional who massively impacted the construction industry with excellence and innovation.
“Mr. Oforeh was a colossus and a genius. The intellectual and professional history of cost management in Nigeria cannot be written without major passages devoted to Mr. E. C. Oforeh. As we mourn him at NIQS, I pray that Mr. Oforeh will find rest in the bosom of the Lord,” Alufohai said.
A past president of the institute, Mr. Samson Emiowele, said of Oforeh, “We have lost a gem. Emeka was exceptionally brilliant and gifted with a highly analytical mind and a stallion capacity for hard work. He was humble and transparently honest.”
Emiowele added that the late Oforeh was one of the most outstanding benefactors of the institute and the profession at all levels.
Another past president of the institute, Mr. Olusegun Ajanlekoko, described the late Oforeh as being “phenomenal without being loud.”
A trustee of NIQS, Mr. L. T. Adekunle, described Oforeh as “an articulate genius, who lived, breathed and died quantity surveying!”
On Friday, January 11, 2013, the President and Council members of NIQS, family members and friends held a service of songs at the deceased residence in Lagos.
At the ceremony, Alufohai commiserated with the immediate and extended family of the deceased.
Alufohai said until his death, Oforeh was one of the earliest Nigerians to master computer operations in the early 1970s, and was one time Principal Consultant, Messrs Cost Consult Associates, and Chief Executive Officer, Cosines (Nigeria) Limited.
The NIQS president said Oforeh’s death was a great loss to the quantity surveying profession and to Nigeria “at a time the cost and project management discipline is coming to the fore of policy and development concerns.”
Until his demise, Oforeh was the Managing Director of Cosines Nigeria Limited, designers and developers of Workmate, a range of cost management application software for the construction industry.
