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Each year, the headlines blur into a tragic pattern: another collapsed structure, more lives lost, and promises that it will never happen again. When flames and smoke swept through Afriland Towers on Lagos Island this September, the familiar questions returned. Why do these disasters keep happening? And what can stop them?
One British-Nigerian lawyer believes the answer lies in law. Abiola Aderibigbe, a dual-qualified solicitor in England & Wales and Ireland, has become one of the clearest voices pressing for a Nigerian Construction Act — a single statute to unify standards, strengthen accountability, and restore public trust in the built environment.
Earlier this month, he laid out the case in a LinkedIn brief that quickly spread, cited in The Nation, ThisDay, The Sun, and across Nigeria’s media. “Nigeria cannot continue to patchwork its way through building safety,” he argued. “We need one framework that leaves no room for ambiguity.”
Aderibigbe’s advocacy is rooted in a life that straddles two worlds. Born in Lagos to Kehinde Aderibigbe, a chartered accountant who served as Director of Accounts at the Lagos Internal Revenue Service, and Olubunmi Aderibigbe (née Soyannwo), a chartered insurer, he grew up in a family where professionalism and public duty went hand in hand.
He attended Grace Children’s School in Gbagada and the International School at the University of Lagos until JSS3, before migrating with his family to the UK. There, he finished secondary school at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic School in Croydon, completed A-levels at Croydon College, earned a Law degree from the University of Surrey, trained at the University of Law (Guildford), and capped it with a Master’s in Corporate Finance at the University of Westminster. Today, as a PhD candidate at Liverpool John Moores University — with collaborative links to Cambridge’s Faculty of Law — he is researching how legal systems shape technology and the built environment.
His proposed Construction Act rests on five pillars: registering and grading contractors, enforceable health and safety standards, governance safeguards against corruption, statutory payment timelines with adjudication, and obligations for skills transfer and local content. “These are not just technical tweaks,” he insists. “They are the backbone of safer, fairer, more investible construction in Nigeria.”
Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu has repeatedly called for a unified building code to reduce collapse rates, and Lagos is already working to domesticate the National Building Code into a Lagos Building Code. Aderibigbe welcomes this but argues that state-by-state reforms will not go far enough. His vision is for a nationwide framework — what he calls “a single source of truth” — binding across all 36 states.
His own family has stood close to public office: his father in Lagos State finance, and his late uncle, Gboyega Soyannwo, as Deputy Chief of Staff to Governor Sanwo-Olu until his passing in 2024. That lineage, Aderibigbe says, makes this advocacy feel less like career ambition and more like continuity of service.
Nigeria has suffered more than 650 collapses and over 1,600 deaths since the 1970s. Each number hides a story — families displaced, workers buried, neighbourhoods scarred. Aderibigbe sees the pattern as intolerable. “Every collapse is preventable,” he says. “This is not about compliance for its own sake. It is about human lives, dignity, and trust.”
Operating between the UK and Nigeria, Aderibigbe lectures on international construction law, sits on boards, and advises on projects from Europe to Africa. His global vantage point convinces him that Nigeria can emulate the legislative strides made in the UK, Australia, and Asia — adapting them to local realities.
Whether lawmakers will take up his blueprint remains to be seen. But for now, Abiola Aderibigbe stands as the British-Nigerian lawyer determined to turn building safety from a recurring tragedy into a matter of enforceable law.
