DONALD TRUMP AND WETIN NAIJA ARCHITECTS DEY DO SEF?!

1. President - elect Donald Trump and his opponent, Hilary Clinton during the first Presidential Debate

The highly anticipated election for the 45th President of the United States of America has finally been dispensed with. Phew! We no see or hear word that period! Preceded by a contentious, acrimonious and no holds barred contest, the emergence of Donald Trump as the President- elect over the preferred candidate, Hillary Clinton sent shock waves across the world. In Nigeria, we went to sleep with Hillary in an early lead but woke up on the 9^th of November 2016 with the unlikely and underrated Donald Trump getting the required number of Electoral College votes to win. What a red letter day!!

 

 

One of the many campaign policies of President-elect Trump was the commitment of at least $ 500 billion to infrastructural spending over a five year period. The spending is required to fix America’s ageing and decaying infrastructure – airports, schools, hospitals, bridges, and train stations. From all indications, American architects will be very busy!  It was against the backdrop of this campaign policy that the executives of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the umbrella body for registered architects in the United States, pledged its commitment to working with President-elect Trump in the strengthening of the nation’s ageing and decaying public infrastructure. The outrage and backlash from the architectural community was fierce and immediate forcing the AIA executives
to publicly apologize for what it termed “a hasty and tone deaf post – election message”.