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| 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
9th 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”.
