Nigeria: Building collapse: Experts call for strict enforcement of national building code
By Kingley Adegboye
As reactions continue to trail last Wednesday’s collapsed building at Ita Faji Street, Lagos Island, killing several children and injuring scores of others, professionals in the built environment have noted that strict enforcement of the building code by developers is the panacea to the unabated menace of building collapse in the country.
Blaming incessant building collapse on shoddy building construction arising from use of sub-standard materials all in a bid to cut corners, the professionals insist that strict enforcement of the code will eliminate quackery from housing delivery while standard buildings will be guaranteed across the country.
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"We are yet to implement the Nigerian building code which covers that if you are going to build a high rise building, it is supposed to have a certain percentage of soil volume or capacity to hold it. A lot of things are wrong with the Nigerian construction industry, everybody has this fault, from the manufacturers, to the clients, the engineers and the marketers. There is a Nigerian building code that needs to be implemented to overhaul the Nigerian construction industry; we need to start from the implementation and enforcement of the building code," [said Amos Alao, an architect and National Secretary of Landscape Architects of Nigeria].
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Alao also called for the vetting of building materials imported into the country, while importers of fake building materials are to be brought to book. He disclosed that engineers have always had the bulk of the blame for most of the collapses in the country, adding that they are either blamed for structural designs or low quality materials.
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