Lagos State tops the list of building collapse fatalities in the construction business sector as over 272 buildings collapsed in the last 10 years, according to statements obtained from the Building Collapse Prevention Guild.
The documents showed that 272 collapsed buildings represent 50 per cent of a total of 541 recorded cases in the country between 1974 and 2022. And Out of the 272 collapses recorded within the past 10 years, at least over 550 persons have lost their lives.
The rising spate of building collapse in construction business sector has dashed the expectations of many. A lot of investments have gone down the drain in the process and more worrisome is the number of lives that were lost to these disasters.
This is even as experts believed that the construction of buildings should be executed by professionals licensed to build.
Sadly, many of the documented cases of building collapse in Nigeria have been attributed to the use of defective or substandard building materials and quacks that do not have the requisite technical knowledge to strictly adhere to building codes and standards
One of the causes of building collapse in the country that has significantly stood out is the non-enforcement of stage certification by regulators in the built economy such that quacks and non-professionals have manned the construction business space with lack of quality assurance control to determine the durability of materials.
Stakeholders’ Views
Reacting, former Redan auditor and managing director of Roccio Carrillo, Mr. Emmanuel Oyelowo said, Nigeria has a systemic failure, where those who are putting up buildings don’t pay attention or abide by the building control regulations.
He noted that the construction of buildings should be executed by professionals licensed to build.
He said: “the construction stage of buildings should be handled by those who by training have experience in building technology, and are licensed to construct buildings. In this case, professional builders become liable if anything goes wrong outside natural disasters.”
He argued that the enforcement of building stage certification would go a long way in checkmating the frequent building collapse while noting that, building do not just collapse but are made by man-made errors and lack of professionalism which is major contributor to building collapse in the country.
Similarly, director, JJ&J property management company Limited, Mr. Ezekiel Oke, noted that, the causative factors surrounding building collapse in the construction sector are; bad designs, extra ordinary load, soil liquification, foundation failure, failure to perform strength test, incompetence, amongst others.
He suggested that government should implement policy and legislate laws banning quacks, unscrupulous agents and non-professionals in building housing projects noting that, they harbour lots of resentments and do not have the requisite skills and professionalism to comply with building codes and professional ethics.
Also speaking in an exclusive chat, the treasurer, Nigeria Institute of Building, Philips Ayotunde, said building stage certification is the composition of several professionals both from the private and public sectors, who have appended their signature and seal at that particular stage, noting that, all the right things have been done on the project to move to the next stage, and can be vouched for.
He said: “once the right materials are used, the right workmanship are procured, among others, , the government issues a certificate based on each stage till the completion stage.”
According to Ayotunde, before anybody moves into any new building, a certificate of completion of fitness of such a building must be obtained.
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The immediate past president of the Nigerian Institute of Building(NIOB), Kunle Awobodu, said it was an aberration when new buildings collapse frequently, while some old buildings were still intact after several years.
Awobodu noted that, “this brings us to the expiry date of a building. Theoretically, a building is assumed to have a lifespan of about 60 years.
According to the former president of NIOB, Nigeria has a systemic failure, where those who are putting up buildings don’t pay attention or abide by the building control regulations. He noted that the construction of buildings should be executed by professionals licensed to build.
Implications of Quacks, Substandard Building Materials
Speaking on this, another expert, Hon. Olatunji Odunlami hinted that building material merchant sells substandard products and passes it off to ignorant and unsuspecting end users while charging the Standard Organisation of Nigeria(SON) to resist such moves to make the nation’s borders porous to allowing such products to get into the country and be sold in the market.
He hinted that some manufacturers are deliberately in connivance with these merchant producing such materials, noting that, the construction site professionals cut corners with them for pecuniary gains which forms a greater part of the sordid situation.
Causative Factors
Speaking on this, he said, several records show that many states in Nigeria have witnessed at least a building collapse. A close look at statistics further reveal that building collapse is directly proportional to the rate and number of buildings being built in states that record more collapses, especially, the big populous states such as Lagos, Kano, Anambra, Delta, Abia, Kwara, Enugu, Ondo, and Oyo, or, that building collapse is directly proportional to weak enforcement.
Odunlami listed the causative factors of building collapse to include; natural factors like, earthquakes, hurricanes and tornadoes, landslides, flooding, fire, and structural weakness of buildings due to old age. Nevertheless, he said, human factors help to bring these about or exacerbate it. If,
He revealed that, majority of quacks and project managers cut corners through reduction in quantity and quality of materials to cut down on costs and maximise profit.
Recommendation
Odunlami averred that professionals in the built environment professions must live up to expectations. “We must act true to the ethics of our profession and make probity our mantra. We must shun the temptation to cut corners either for personal gains or to satisfy our client owners or developers.
“The professional and regulatory bodies of each profession must be alive to their responsibilities of upholding professional integrity and be firm on investigating and punishing professional misconduct,” he pointed out.
He added that the public at large should assist the enforcement agencies to identify illegal developments, suspicious looking buildings under constriction where they suspect that corners have been cut.
“They should act as whistleblowers within and outside their neighbourhoods. This will go a long way to arrest and stop such potentially dangerous buildings at infancy and prevent building collapse and the untold hardships that follow’” he said.
Odunlami warned that the increasing level of industrialization and population are signposts of building collapse while charging stakeholders and construction experts to be vigilant in order not to have a commensurate increase in building collapse on our hands, with contractors and developers of little or zero training and doubtful competencies flocking increasingly into the state from neighbouring states.
He advised that Individually and collectively, we have a responsibility and indeed a duty to prevent building collapse particularly in our state and in our country generally by adopting the concept of duty of care in the entire building production process.
