The collapse of Fourscore Tower’s 21-storey building in upscale Ikoyi, Lagos last week has raised a lot of dust among the seven professional groups in the built environment. Their leadership argues that the building came down because of government’s failure to ensure that the National Building Code (NBC) is passed into law. They also cite the failure of regulators to sanction offenders in the past, writes OKWY IROEGBU-CHIKEZIE
Has State governments learned any lesson from collapsed buildings in the past? No? says former President, Nigeria Institution of Structural Engineers (NIStructee), Dr. Samuel Ilugbekai, who insisted that had the government learnt any lesson, especially from that of a building that came down at Lekki Gardens two years ago, which had casualties, the collapse of the 21-storey building in Ikoyi, last week, would have been averted.
He is not alone in putting the blame at the doorsteps of governments. The leaders of the seven professional groups in the sector said the members of the National Assembly should share in the blame for not passing the National Building Code (NBC) into law, years after the bill was sent to them.
They argued that, by now, it should have been domesticated by each state to serve as the manual for the sector and the tide of building failures would have been stemmed with each practitioner staying on his lane and regulators able to function without much interference.
Ilugbekai asked the government to empower the professionals to take the lead and bring in their competencies to bear on the sector.
– Advertisement –
On the Lekki incident, he regretted that the developer had gone ahead to build other estates as the government failed to make public the findings from the panel nor the developer prosecuted for his negligence.
“The recent building collapse is what is called a text-book failure i.e. it is a clear pattern. However, we will not assume until the regulatory bodies finish with their findings. One can only assume the monumental loss it would have been for the state if it had been completed and handed over to the new owners; failure is a clear pattern. The impact of the collapse would have undermined the integrity of the adjoining buildings and government will do well to investigate them as the impact would have sent shock waves into the ground travelling kilometres from the site,” he said.
He lamented that professionals had been taken for a ride and if the trend was not corrected, there might not be an end to building collapse.
The past NIStructee chief drew the attention of the public to irregularities. He noted, for example, that the signposts that was supposed to bear the names of professional firms involved in the said construction were not seen. Rather, in their place were only phone numbers. He wondered how the government or her agencies would have monitored such development.
Immediate-past President, Nigeria Institute of Building (NIOB), Kunle Awobodu, said it was as if efforts to stave off building collapse by professionals were in vain. He said the major challenge of the sector was quackery and negligence by state government officials.
Awobodu said: “Building projects of this magnitude are handled by specialists in the construction industry and not people that do not have a past record of integrity with the approving authorities.
“The pedigree of the contractors handling the project needed to be ascertained by the approving authorities before they were given the job.
“However, if the project was monitored by the relevant government officials, the disaster would have been averted, because they would have been able to notice the structural defects that eventually resulted in the collapse of the building.
“Now, prospective property investors will lose confidence in property investment because of this incident. The government needs to boost the confidence of property investors in the state.”
He regretted that people were only mindful of the gains and not safety of the lives. He acknowledged that most failures were as a result of errors on site because of invasion by quacks who had eliminated the services of builders who are to be on site to supervise the construction.
Speaking on the need to empower regulatory institutions, the former NIOB boss regretted that as large as Ikoyi and Victoria Island were, they only have one supervisor and six monitoring officers each and wondered how they could be effective.
Awobodu recalled the danger that these officers face in executing their jobs as sometimes when sites were sealed the developers and owners who are connected to political powers would ambush them, most times to the detriment of their lives.
He said: “There is corruption in the system. Recall that we investigated the Synagogue Church collapse and Lekki Gardens, Massey Street. We followed up with a court action but were greeted with several adjournments for years.”
Chairman, Nigeria Institute of Architects (NIA), Lagos State chapter, David Majekodunmi, said the nation needed an enabling law to make the NBC work, noting that every state needed its NBC to regulate the sector.
He said NBC gives a minimal requirement for materials to be used in every construction as the soil types are different. He said the wind at Victoria Island, for instance, comes with salt and that a developer or builder would need to know that and make adequate arrangement to have materials that would be resistant to corrosion.
“In the NBC, part of the prerequisite is to have professional indemnity insurance. But, sadly, our insurance companies are not helping matters as they will want to collect the whole gain from the consultant. Sometimes, I procure mine from abroad, which is pocket-friendly.”
He stated that looking carefully at the two initial towers by the same developer, they looked different from the one that collapsed and wondered if there was no compromise in terms of quality of materials and cost.
Majekodunmi wondered who the consultants to the project were and if one person singlehandedly built and supervised and what the relevant agencies of government were doing to the extent that they didn’t notice the defects in the building.
The NIA boss asked for continuous material testing and advised the government to outsource part of the inspection to establish the structural stability of a building.
Asked if he was optimistic with the investigations by the government, he expressed doubt as, according to him, in 2019, when children died on Massey Street, Lagos Island, the government did the same thing; unfortunately, nothing came out of it years after.
Reiterating the culpability of the government, he regretted that since the tenure of Dr. Olusegun Mimiko as Minister of Works & Housing, the National Assembly has failed to pass the NBC into law to guide the sector. According to him, if it had been passed, the nation would not be witnessing the tragedy of this magnitude.
Lagos Chapter Chairman, NIoB, Mr. Lucky Isename, appealed to the Lagos State Government to implement its physical planning laws to stem the rising spate of building collapse in the state.
Isename, while identifying causes of building collapse, said the state had beautiful laws which must be implemented without delay to curb construction failures.
“We need the Lagos State government to strictly implement the Lagos State Physical Planning Permit Authority laws to put a stop to collapse of building in Lagos State,” he said. He called for the engagement of qualified builders and other certified built environment professionals in projects to guarantee quality assurance in building production processes.
“We await the outcome of the five-man panel recently inaugurated by the Lagos State government to provide detailed causes of the collapse and recommendations,” he said.
Immediate-past Chairman, Lagos Chapter, NIOB, Mr. Sunday Wusu, called for the inclusion of the private sector in the enforcement and implementation of the state’s building laws for efficiency. He said junior and middle level members of staff of the regulatory agencies of the state government could easily be intimidated by highly-placed individuals in the society, hence, the need for private engagement.
“That is the reason we have been advocating private inspectors; marshall them in all the local governments. Let them be registered in the local government where they are domiciled. Not that a private inspector domiciled in Lekki should be working at Badagry. Wherever you are, work within that environment and if anything happens, you will be called upon, and if a management is being called upon, it is not one person, so they will be responsible for what they are doing,” he said.
National Chairman, Nigeria Institution of Civil Engineers, (NICE), Dr. Jang Tanko, while commiserating with the state, said the incident was avoidable because a structure of that magnitude was supposed to be handled by competent professionals and contractors, especially engineers, throughout the construction of the project.
He canvassed the need to engage professionals to unravel the cause of the collapse. He stated that preliminary investigations by his group showed compromises at several levels culminating in the tragic collapse.
The NICE chair said the incessant collapse of buildings had once again brought to the fore the need for the government to strengthen regulatory bodies and ensure the elimination of quackery in the sector.
In a statement entitled: “Time for Lagos landlords to protect their investments from collapse and save lives”, the Chairman, Nigeria Institution of Estate Surveyors & Valuers (NIESV), Lagos chapter, Olabisi Demola-Alade, said the unfortunate incidence was preventable.
According to her, in a report, unconfirmed by the police, about 50 people were working on the building at 20, Gerrard Road, Ikoyi before it collapsed at about 3 p.m., Monday, November 1, 2021.
She recalled that the Lagos State Building Control Agency (LASBCA) had visited the site of the incident and had clarified that the landlord got the nod to build a 15-storey building, but ended up erecting a 21-storey.
She said while the Lagos State branch of NIESV was yet to verify this, they believed that a responsible agency of government such as LASBCA would not misrepresent an important fact as we have now.
“As estate surveyors and valuers who are the core professionals in the real estate sector, we are pained by this kind of development that results in loss of lives and billions of naira emanating from failure on the part of real estate investors to follow building regulations and international best practices by engaging requisite professionals for construction of a project of this magnitude. The laws of Lagos State require that a certified and registered structural engineer should be on ground at every storey building site to monitor material input at every stage and certify that they are the recommended standards before issuing certificate in defense of the building,” the statement added.
She urged property developers to desist from resorting to shortcuts which may lead to losses and death of innocent citizens, who, unfortunately, are breadwinners of the families.
According to her, the state has had enough building collapse leading to loss of lives and investments worth billions of naira. Between 2011 and 2019, over 84 buildings collapsed across Nigeria with only 21 of the 84 occurring outside Lagos.
“According to the figures, 59 per cent of the collapsed buildings in Lagos State in 2019 were existing structures while 41 per cent were under construction; seven of the cases were full collapse.
“Several factors have been fingered as the causes of building collapse in Nigeria, chiefly the use of substandard building materials, the deployment of cost-cutting techniques in housing construction which are unsafe and the lack of professional supervision at various levels of the construction process.
We cannot continue to allow excuses that culminate in disaster and great losses. Now is time for all of us to stand together and say no more building collapse.
“Every landlord, real estate investor, housing stakeholder, professional and expert in the built sector to embrace the laws and international best practices relating to erections of buildings as regulated by LASBCA and other relevant agencies.”
Also a professional, who didn’t want his name in print, said though the government and her regulatory agencies and poor workmanship might be blamed, another canker worm in the sector is the unhealthy competition among the various professionals in the sector.
He frowned at a situation where architects and engineers feel superior to other professionals and that most times would veer off their calling into that of others.
He said this created room for quackery as some artisans and draughtsmen and women most times see themselves as professionals in the sector, thereby causing unimaginable problems.
He advised them to unite and fight as a common front to attract the attention and respect of the government and the public in the interest of the nation.
Also, another unnamed built environment professional picked holes in the selection of a town planner to head the panel set up by the Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu. He said though he does not want to sound controversial, he questioned the appropriateness of the selection, as according to him, what they are investigating here is structural integrity, among others which is in the realm of civil or structural engineering.
source: thenationonlineng.
