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Nigeria has recorded incidents of building collapse despite all the regulations. Why is it so? Is it a failure on the part of the regulators, engineers in the field or who?
It is a very vast discussion because failure is different from collapse. When a building collapses, it is different from engineering failure. But one leads to the other; one is a subset of the other one. When people go into construction, there are so many factors you must put into consideration. One is the client syndrome. We see that people go into construction of buildings without first of all sitting down, analysing what it will cost and what it will take. Sometimes you see a man, he wants to build three or four floors and he has only one million in his account; and he wants somebody who will help him to compromise the material and get to a certain level in the construction work. That alone is a system failure. We call it client syndrome. We don’t have insurance policies that help to regulate these things. If Nigeria has insurance policy in building construction, before you embark on such a project, you bring your design to a team of engineers or a team of the building industry. Engineers alone cannot give you a befitting building or construction. Before you ever think of conceptualising a building, you must first of all get a surveyor, just like you said earlier, who comes and looks at the elevation; look at what is obtainable; the terrain. Then you bring a town planner who tells you ‘oh this is a green area or this is a flooding area, this is for this or that’. When that is done, you now get a very qualified architect who conceptualises what you want into reality; your dream building just like this building you saw. I sat down with my architect and I told him what I want to have. And we sat down together and designed it. I said ‘no remove this, remove this, put that, put that’. That’s how it is done. By the time you finish, you now bring a structural engineer who puts in the structural beams and columns where they ought to be and then fine-tunes the structure by giving you what we call a calculation sheet. He has to balance it on ground and tell you this is the number of rods; this is this, this is that that you need here. When you finish, you hand over the design to a builder who is the man who finishes the project; he is the man on site. He starts the project with the artisans; well certified artisans. Your duty and the duty of the architect is to once in a while visit the site on a timely basis; you supervise and ensure that what you designed is what is coming up. That is the challenge. But in this contemporary time, people just say I want to build and they are going to build it. You get one quack who says I can set a block; probably a mason man who has been attached to an engineer for years. He now takes over the project and starts setting blocks for you without putting into consideration these things I just told you. At a point he tells you ‘Oga, get 50 bags of cement let us start, when it finishes we’ll know what to do next’. That shouldn’t be. A quantity surveyor ought to be there. The man looks at the design and tells you this is the number of rods you need here; the quantity of cement and the volume of sand, the concrete that you need to get this house done. If you don’t have that money you wait because in building, you don’t build and stop. If you leave it for some time, the rain will make it dilapidated as it will get soaked. In Nigeria you can see that our blocks are nothing to write home about. That’s another factor. Block moulding, the regulators have neglected that area. That is the fundamental part. There was a show I saw one day where a Ghanaian, a Togolese, a Cameroonian and a Nigerian were asked to showcase their blocks from up. When they threw blocks from Togo and Ghana, they came down strong. But the Nigerian own, the moment you lift it up, it scattered. That’s the challenge.
Why was it so? What caused it? Was it because of the cement used in moulding the blocks or what?
You see, our cement manufacturing company needs to be regulated. The standard of the cement industry has gone down drastically. And it affects the boys or the men who do the block moulding. That’s the challenge. We will need to regulate those who are into block moulding. It is important. Nobody looks at them; nobody checks them at all. That is the greatest challenge. These are the areas we need to look into. It’s a whole lot of area. For us to get it right as the regulators, we must put these machinery into place. First of all, we cannot do it alone; it has to be a concerted effort between the federal and state governments; when I say the federal government I am referring to COREN; the state government where the laws are domiciled; and the building control agencies in the state. The two agencies we have in the state: the Physical Planning Board and Awka Capital Territory Development Agency (ACTDA) are failing us. They are understaffed. They don’t have proper agency for monitoring. Good enough, the Physical Planning Board led by Barr. Chike Mmaduekwe has just set up a one-stop unit of built industries where COREN is represented and all the built industries come together to help. We have the COREN engineers, the town planners, the architects, and the builders. We all come together and offer professional advice. Once in a while, we join the ministry for supervision and monitoring. That is what the state ought to do. It is part of the recommendation I made when I was the chairman of the Building Collapse Committee that the governor set up. I advised the government to institutionalise an agency for control, monitoring and supervision of all projects that are going on in the state including roads. COREN should be made an independent supervisor or monitoring agent different from the government agencies so that they will not be biased. If you look at the agencies in the state, they will tell you that they are understaffed. They don’t have vehicles for movement. So, these are the critical things. And then, I also think that there is also a need for the state government to establish a building control agency just like we have in Lagos. They have to be independent agencies different from ministries or civil servants. They should be different because their job is a time bomb and it has a lifesaving condition.
You mentioned that strong blocks are critical in building construction but I have heard those in the building industry say that blocks are not really important; that what carries the weight of a storey building are the pillars. Are you saying that they’re wrong?
No, it’s correct. That’s what I am saying. Each of them plays a component role. The pillars are the structural beam of the house. But assuming you’re not building two or three storeys, you want to build a simple bungalow, you need blocks as well. Currently, Nigerians are looking into modernising or bringing in innovations or using woods instead of blocks because blocks have failed. And blocks appear costlier. Looking at the cost of cement and sand currently, you can even use wood walls now but I am telling you for now that we’ve not gone into that, block plays a very critical role in the construction industry and it is high time we look at it, regulate it and see how that area should be monitored. That’s one part. Another critical part in one of those contributory factors is people not agreeing that they are not qualified. For the fact that you went to the university and you did not study civil engineering or structural engineering but you studied environmental engineering, and you’re seen in a site undertaking construction and you say that you’re an engineer, even with all the licence you have, you are a quack. That’s a challenge. It’s only in the engineering profession that we see a proliferation of people coming in to say we are qualified. You see an architect undertaking building construction; you see a quantity surveyor undertaking building construction. Yes, because they have some fundamental training but that doesn’t make you a qualified person to undertake that. This is where we have the highest quack. You can’t see that in law. As a young tutelage in law, if you have not gone to the law school, even if you’re the most brilliant in your set, without being called to the bar, you can’t even move a single motion even in magistrate court. But here, as a final year student of engineering, you see the young man on site, answering the engineer. His own is even better. I am telling you that those boys you see on the road answer to engineers. We need a proper orientation completely. COREN needs to take up this project. We need to do proper regulation. Nigeria needs to make a law to nip this in the bud. We must make sure that whoever is not qualified does not take up this project.
Why do roads collapse in this country a few months after construction or paving?
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That is corruption. Let me give you an example. The governor of Anambra State came up and said that he wants to give Anambra the best road of 30 years duration. We were part of the inspection of the road from Amansea to Awba-Ofemmili. It was a very wonderful road. We saw the quality of construction undertaken by the company that handled it particularly the soil stabilisation process; giving it durability. But as time goes on, I don’t know what happened; subsequent contractors are now compromising. There was a petition we wrote against the Temp-Site to Okpuno Road. When we inspected that project, we looked at the Bill of Engineering Measurement and Evaluation (BEME), and we saw that the underground tunnel. The governor decided to construct the road to solve the perennial problem of flooding at that Y-Junction, because of the quantity of flood that comes there. Believe you me, when we got there, the young man had reduced the tunnel such that nobody could access it. And I asked him, even in your own country, how can you enter here and do maintenance? The manhole you designed, can you enter it? What is the essence of the manhole? Is it not for you to go in and do maintenance when you’re covering it? When we eventually entered there, we saw debris already covering it. Rain had not started that time. If you go there now, you can’t even access it. And then we raised the alarm, the Commissioner for Works and a few other persons came and brought some counter reports and allowed it. I told the young man to break the tunnel and redo it. If the system is not corrupt, the governor would have intervened and set up a panel to look at that design. And say what are we looking out for? I’ll say His Excellency this needs to be expanded for proper maintainability. But it is not done. Check that place after four years, it will be another thing entirely. We need independent persons who will monitor what the governor is doing. The young man has done over 750km of road in Anambra but most of them are not done properly.
In other words it won’t take long before the roads start failing. Is that what you are saying?
No! When you say 30 years, it is a long duration. But I am telling you that you can see it already; some of them are failing. There are eyewitnesses everywhere. Look at the Aroma to Ifite Road, it is already failing. When they were doing it, people were rejoicing. But when COREN got there, we said ‘no, no, no, this is not done; you are deceiving people. Stop this work’. We called the attention of the ER that time but nobody could hear us because we don’t have the teeth to bite. If we have the backing of the House of Assembly and the machinery of the Federal Government, to stop all projects that are not done in compliance with engineering best practices, you see that things will change. I raised the alarm on Ifite Road but nobody listened. Go there now, you will see potholes springing up; less than three months, they are there. Just look at the Amawbia-Nise-Agulu-Nanka-Ekwulobia Road, it is already failing.
If the Nigerian engineers are that good, why are they not constructing or paving our roads? Why should the foreigners be doing that whereas we have thousands of engineers in this country?
That’s another big challenge. If I tell you the first poser I had from the ministry when we paid a courtesy visit. He said without fear that the Nigerian engineers have failed; that local engineers have failed over time. And we overlooked it because whoever is saying that is one. If you’re not qualified, you wouldn’t have been where you are today. If you’re saying that the Nigerian local engineers have failed and you are one of us, it means that you have also failed. That’s why we overlooked it. But I am telling you that we have not failed. Nigerian engineers are good. Look at the road construction, you won’t see a white man; a few of them you would see on the road. It is the Nigerian engineers who are on the road on a daily basis doing construction. The challenge that we have is that most Nigerian engineers are not properly supervised. And again, because they are Nigerian engineers, the popular corruption syndrome has eaten deep into the fabrics of the system. A few of them are honest. I can tell you a few engineers in Nigeria who are into construction that are honest; and they stick to the rule. And they say this cannot happen. It is either you take the entire project or we maintain our integrity. I can go ahead and mention names for you; they are good. But those people are not given most jobs to do because they cannot cut corners and they cannot do otherwise. They prefer to do one and their names stick on it rather than to cut corners. The reason is that we are excellently very intelligent. Nigerian engineers are wonderful. By the law, the industrial quota says that you don’t bring in any foreigner to undertake an engineering construction unless in that area there is no local engineer. As a matter of fact, they come in to supplement, not to lead. That is why before they come in here, they must go through the Ministry of Interior for certification and then they go to our office in Abuja (COREN) to obtain a licence to practice. But our people prefer to give them jobs instead of giving our own engineers to do. Again, I must thank the Governor Chukwuma Soludo. Out of 55 contractors working in Anambra State, over 33 of them are local engineers; even though majority of them are not from Anambra but they are doing very well. This is what we want. When you give them a job, assign a monitoring team. That’s all. You see, engineering has one principle. Design is perfect but implementation is where the challenge is. Implementation requires teamwork. The idea of eat alone syndrome is what is killing the profession. I just told you what I did here. You came in and saw how beautiful this place is. I didn’t do that alone. I told you I hired a team but the beautiful part of it is that I personally supervised it. And I just told you how everything was done in eight months.
When the national leadership of your organisation visited the Minister of Works, Chief David Umahi, he said that it would be good if what is practiced in China is replicated here. He said that in China, if a road fails, the engineer in charge would be jailed for life if the government checks and finds out that the fault was his. Do you support that view?
Perfect! Our law is here. Section 18 of the Act made provision for that. You go in for it. If you fail you go in. It says that a person who contravenes section 6 shall on conviction lose his licence for a minimum term of one year and maximum term of five years and pay a fine of not less than N1 million. The laws are there but our problem is implementation. It’s there. Even Dave Umahi, the minister should also be checked. He has a lot of contraventions he has indulged in a few months as a minister. See, our regulators need to rise up to the challenge. The House of Assembly, National Assembly need to see this as a matter of public importance because people are dying. When a building collapses, people die. And then nobody says anything. They say it’s a mistake.
