Like other old professions, the first group of Estate Surveyors and Valuers in Nigeria were trained outside the country. Majority of them were trained in the United Kingdom and belonged to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). Most of them started their educational pursuit in Estate Management at the College of Art and Science, Enugu where they were prepared for the Intermediate Examinations of the RICS. By the late sixties, some of these – Returnee Estate Surveyors and Valuers decided to come together to form a counterpart indigenous society similar to the RICS, that would take care of the developmental needs of Nigeria in the relatively new and emerging field of Land Economy.

It was their belief that providing such a platform would increase the number of qualified professionals as well as give them the needed impetus to resist the influx of pseudo – practitioners (Quacks) who had already taken root and were in fact, ostensibly, filling the vacuum in what were ordinarily the exclusive areas of competence of the noble profession. This effort later crystallized into what is now known as The Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV), which was registered as a professional body in 1969.

Six years later, in 1975, it got Federal Government`s recognition through the promulgation of the Estate Surveyors and Valuers Registration Board Decree No. 24, now Act (Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 1990, Volume 7, Chapter III), which established the Estate Surveyors and Valuers Registration Board of Nigena (ESVARBON) as the organ of the Federal Government that regulates the practice of Estate Surveying and Valuation in Nigeria. The First President of the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors was Mr John wood Ekpenyong who incidentally, was the First Nigerian to qualify as a Chartered Surveyors in the United Kingdom.