No fewer than 25 persons were rescued from the rubble of a seven-storey building under construction that collapsed on Wednesday on First Avenue, in the Banana Island area of Ikoyi, Lagos State.
Construction workers were performing their daily tasks in the building that had been under construction for months when it suddenly caved in around 4.58pm.
Consequently, the Lagos State government has ordered that all development projects in the highbrow area be placed on hold.
The State Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Gbenga Omotoso, in a statement on Thursday, said the process was to ensure that a comprehensive audit was done by officials of the Lagos State Building Control Agency.
He explained that the directive was to enable the government to determine the number of buildings being constructed without approval in the highbrow area and to know if all the approved buildings were being built in line with the approval limits provided.
Omotoso said preliminary investigations revealed that the collapse occurred during concrete casting, noting that eyewitnesses said one of the concrete mixer trucks rammed into some load-bearing columns of the building, causing a loud bang and leading to the collapse.
“The building was hitherto sealed by the Lagos State Government for not having the approval to commence construction, but the developers continued to build, hiding under the security of their estate/gated community,” the Commissioner said.
The collapse of this seven-storey building in Ikoyi is another incident too many in Lagos, because the state has recorded so many cases of building collapse in the last two decades.
The Lagos State branch of the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers had noted recently that between 2011 and 2019, there were 88 building collapse incidents in Nigeria and only 21 of this number happened outside Lagos.
This lends credence to findings by researchers at the Department of Engineering Sciences in Kwara State University, Ilorin, that the South West region of Nigeria recorded the highest number of building collapse incidents in the country between 2009 and 2019.
The use of South West may be just a matter of nomenclature or convenience. Lagos is the right word to use because if the researchers were to disclose an analysis of the distribution of the incident, it would not have been surprising if Lagos alone accounted for 90 percent.
The question that readily comes to mind is ‘why Lagos?’ And answers come falling over one another; they are not far-fetched. Unarguably, Lagos is a megacity by sheer number. But, in terms of landmass, it is the smallest, yet the largest by virtue of its population which is estimated at 20 million.
This gap in landmass and population is constantly creating economic, social, and environmental problems that translate easily into housing deficit and over-crowding, such that at any given time, people are in desperate need of housing as both public and private sector efforts at increasing supply are grossly inadequate to meet the surging demand.
What this has led to, unfortunately, is a situation where anything goes. It has also created an amorphous situation where everybody and anybody is a real estate investor and a house builder. And with the state and its regulatory agencies looking the other way when the thief is in the house, what we have on our hands are desperadoes who venture into property development.
There are other major factors that contribute to building collapse in Nigeria as a whole, such as the use of non-professionals in the building industry; corruption, which drives cutting corners, and the use of substandard construction materials.
But Lagos as a city and a government has been so negligent in minding what happens in its housing sector. It does seem that the regulatory authorities in the state are accessories to the unwholesome activities in the sector that threw up houses with questionable professional supervision.
“Time has come for the state to prove wrong, popular views that the building collapse problem rests with the government as its planning authorities seem to be so much in a hurry that they don’t go further than the approval of the building plan”
There is so much more that the state and the Federal Government can do to end the frequent loss of both human and material resources to building collapse.
Time has come for the state to prove wrong, popular views that the building collapse problem rests with the government as its planning authorities seem to be so much in a hurry that they don’t go further than the approval of the building plan.
We are yet to see any government enforcing the National Building Code, which seeks to ensure the safety, efficiency, and quality of buildings and structures in the country. The code also sets out minimum standards to be met in pre-construction such as design; construction and post-construction stages of buildings.
It is our belief that buildings collapse because people want to cut corners and, most times, the person who checks the building of these houses is an unqualified professional, and the man who engages such a person does so because he does not want to pay the right fee to a professional who will do the right job.
In other climes, buildings don’t just collapse every other day. From the architectural design stage to civil and structural engineering, actual construction and completion of a project, efforts are made to ensure that laid down regulations are strictly adhered to.
In Nigeria, failure of the regulating agencies to properly perform their supervisory roles has given way to a situation where quacks have taken over with grim consequences.
Too much blood is being spilled needlessly in Nigeria’s building industry for all sorts of reasons that even professionals in the sector recognise as avoidable.
There are indications that building collapse is also often caused by attitudinal problems. It is, therefore, important that there be a register of every professional in the industry to check their activities and for documentation. Given the volume of work in the construction industry, it may also be necessary to engage external but trust-worthy certifiers to carry out construction site monitoring.
The situation is not irredeemable, as most of these challenges could be minimised through proactive actions, training, raising awareness and provision of resourceful technical support to the code users. It is also important to enact legislation on the enforcement and compliance, simplifying the code requirements and domestication by state governments.
Enlightenment among the professionals through the regulatory and professional bodies will go a long way in providing solutions to the challenge of building code for modern infrastructural development in Nigeria.
On the whole, there is an urgent need for a complete overhaul of the nation’s building and construction regulations.
There should be adequate sanction for both erring contractors and landlords. A policy should be put in place whereby any professional connected with a collapsed building should forfeit his licence and face the full weight of the law. The land upon which the collapsed building was erected should be forfeited to the government and the landlord jailed without option of fine. Buildings marked for demolition by town planning authorities, should be demolished without delay. Unless drastic steps are taken and building codes implemented to the letter, Nigeria will continue to have these avoidable serial disasters.
