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By Maduka Nweke, [email protected]
Professionals in the built environment have risen in unison to address the incessant building collapse in the country. The professionals are displeased that in the midst of qualified builders, peoples and organisations still engage the services of quacks who use substandard materials to build houses meant to carry various floors.
One of the professionals, and former National President, Nigeria Institute of Builders (NIOB), Chief Kunle Awobodu, while commenting on the building collapse debate stated that several factors have been identified as causes of building collapse in the country. He said that lack of proper subsoil investigation, faulty design and copied design which the user does not have authority over, non-adherence to approved design and poor workmanship are some of the things that result in building collapse.
Awobodu went further to say that use of the substandard materials, use of quacks and inadequate supervision result in building collapse. “Non-adherence to professional advice, inadequate drainage, change in use, professional incompetence and negligence, ignorance and constructing in crisis situation. Others, unrealistic construction timelines, cognitive dissonance, human greed, fire incident, lack of maintenance and force majeure/ natural disaster,” he said.
In one of his papers, the President, Real Estate Developers Association of Nigeria (REDAN), and the CEO, Jedo Investment Company Limited, Dr. Aliyu Oroji Wamakko, said, the price being paid by the Nigerian construction professionals is high in image damaging due to the activities of quacks. He said, the earlier the menace of building collapse is put to rest, the better for the practitioners in the Nigerian building industry.
According to him, “the spirit of giving back to the industry/society, where we earn our income, in order to uplift our professional image is a form of social responsibility that we naturally align with.
Hence, we shall continue to expend our personal resources to fight causes of building collapse. Despite series of disappointment and discouragement, we cannot afford to give up. We are resolute in this mission. There is no man – made problem that defies solution,” he noted.
Wamakko observed that the size of developers has become enormous, thereby overwhelming the government monitoring apparatus. “90 per cent of developers do not belong to the relevant association such as REDAN and quite a number of these unregulated developers are very influential. The culture of inducement being promoted by many developers has encouraged compromise in the circles of government officials,”he stated.
He further said, “In the light of the foregoing, we hereby appeal to developers to abide by the building regulations and engage the appropriate professionals in the pre-construction, construction and post- construction stages of building. They should consider the risk involved in building construction more than the gains.
“Developers embarking on multi-storey building construction should desist from direct labour method and engage the services of reputable construction companies.
It is a clever way of mortgaging risk. Subscribers are becoming scared of high- rise buildings constructed by developers. Saving cost at the expense of human life could result in huge financial losses, chorusing the foolhardiness of penny- wise pound foolish. We equally appeal to the government to lessen the burden on developers by reducing the high development fees and taxation. Expensive preliminary costs incurred in building plan approval etc continue to weigh high of construction,” he concluded.
