Thursday, June 26 was another black day in Lagos. A day that started like any other normal day but before noon was enveloped in agony of pains and sorrows for many families.
A two-storey building at Alakija Bus-stop, along Old Ojo Road, Satellite Town, in Oriade Local Council Development Area, LCDA, of Lagos State, had suddenly collapsed, killing nine persons. It, indeed, brought an unending nightmare to scores of families, friends and well-wishers.
A statement by the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency (LASEMA) noted that after the rescue operations were concluded at the site, 27 persons were saved and taken to hospital for treatment.
“Twenty-seven persons were rescued alive through coordinated efforts by the LASEMA Response Team, sister agencies, and members of the community.
“Victims received immediate pre-hospital care from LASAMBUS and were transferred to nearby hospitals for further treatment,” the statement from LASEMA Head of Public Affairs, Afolabi Olawale, read.
“Nine fatalities recovered, including four adults confirmed dead before responders’ arrival, and five additional victims, including a two-year-old baby girl.
“All deceased were respectfully bagged and handed over to the State Environmental Health Monitoring Unit, SEHMU, for identification and onward release to families,” it added.
Giving a breakdown of the rescue activities, LASEMA said its “Director of Operations, Olanrewaju Akinsanya, and Cappa Base Coordinator, Salami, led operations on the ground.
“LASEMA’s heavy-duty excavator was deployed to augment two CCECC excavators already on site, enabling safe access to trapped victims and accelerating the operation to ground zero,” it said.
Following the incident, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu has directed the Lagos State Building Control Agency (LASBCA) to commence immediate structural integrity assessment of adjoining buildings and enforce compliance with building codes in the area.
The incident occurred less than 24 hours after another building collapsed in Rivers State.
The Rivers State incident involved a four-storey building, still under construction along Peter Odili Road.
Several workers were trapped under debris, leading to a large-scale rescue operation involving emergency agencies and security personnel.
Three persons were rescued and taken to nearby hospitals for treatment.
Indeed, incidents of building collapse have become so rampant in the country.
The situation has become worse such that a person who wakes up hale and hearty in the morning and leaves for work may not return home alive.
Some others will still be in their homes and death will come calling. It is that bad.
A sympathiser at site of the Alakija incident captured the scenario thus: “They leave home in search of daily bread. They bid goodbye to their children and loved ones as they leave for work. Most often, they never knew they were bidding the final goodbye as they never always returned alive.
“They are labourers hired at building construction sites across the country. Others meet death right inside the comfort of their homes due to poorly constructed structures.”
Experts have attributed the rising spate of structural collapses to several factors, including poor building materials.
An estate agent, Anthony Chukwudi described the scourge as a nightmare, which has refused to go away.
He said: “In the last couple of years, the menace of building collapse has become one of the biggest nightmares facing the country. The list of such incidents across Nigeria is endless.
“It is believed in some quarters that every week, a building would collapse somewhere in Nigeria but most of them are not always reported.
“However, more worrisome is the fact that each time it happened, promises would be made by the government to look into the cause of the incident and punish offenders but it never stopped.”
Genesis
Before now, building collapse was viewed as a calamity because it rarely happened. People adhered to the building laws because flouting them would attract severe punishment.
But in recent times, everything seems to be on the contrary. Building collapse has become a recurring decimal with its attendant loss of both human and material resources.
The situation has given credence to Andit Nehru’s assertion that evil unchecked grows and evil tolerated poisons the whole system.
However, as a punitive measure to arrest the ugly trend, the Lagos State government through the State House of Assembly had enacted a law, which empowers the state to assume ownership of any collapsed building.
Much as the implementation of the new law in the state had put landlords on their toes, with regard to the quality of raw materials they use when building new houses and the need to properly maintain the existing ones, buildings are still collapsing in Lagos and elsewhere.
Lagos State government, since the law became operational, has demolished a couple of houses and acquired such plots of lands across the state.
“The demolition of a two-storey building that partially collapsed after a heavy down on Freeman Street, Oyingbo area of the state and the subsequent revocation of the ownership of the property comes to mind.
“The same fate awaits the Alakija building that collapsed last week. The state government would take ownership of the property according to the existing law in the state.
Experts react
Expressing his thoughts on the ugly trend, a structural engineer and developer, Kunle Adegbenro, pointedly laid the bulk of the blame on the government.
He blamed the governments at all levels for failure to enforce the existing building laws due to corruption.
He said: “When an individual wants to build a house, there are laid down procedures to be followed. First, a surveyor has to be engaged to take measurements of the site, then a soil test expert who will determine the texture of the soil to be able to know the kind of structure that could be erected on such lands.
“Also needed in the picture are the architect who will draw the design of the building and the structural engineer who will ensure that materials such as rods are of the best quality standard.
“The structural engineer, apart from ensuring that cement, gravel, sand and water are all in the right quantities before mixture, also ensures that the instructions of the surveyor, soil test expert and architect are strictly adhered to.
“But today, nobody who wants to build a house adheres to the procedures; they would rather cut corners by bribing their way.
“Town planning authorities whose responsibility is to ensure that the procedures are adhered to don’t do anything about it.
“They are so corrupt that even when they discover that a particular building has not complied with the building code and is likely to collapse after building, they would close their eyes as long as the owner of the building is ready to oil their palm.
“They collect huge sums of money from the builders and allow them to continue with the building which already has defects from the foundation.”
He accused agencies of the government charged with the responsibility of ensuring that builders comply with the building laws of failure to carry out proper monitoring.
“Even when they monitor, they take bribes and allow construction works to continue on buildings that deviate from the building law. For instance, during the monitoring exercise, if the town planning officials discover that the building plan approval does not correspond with the structure being erected on the site, the normal thing is to issue the contravention order, followed by a stop-work order before the demolition.
“But you find out that when they issue the contravention order followed by the stop-work order, the property owner would quickly approach them, negotiate with them, pay an agreed sum and the construction continues,” said.
Apart from lack of monitoring and corruption of town planning officials, he said most personnel of the town planning authorities are not professionals.
“A situation where town planning personnel are mostly people who studied administration and other social science courses, what do you expect from them when they go to a construction site?
“Where do you expect them to borrow brain from at the site to know what they do not know? It is not possible. Until the monitoring team of the various town planning authorities are made of professionals in different building fields, the noise about monitoring will just be a mirage.
“They will just go to the site and negotiate with the builders and once they are ‘settled,’ construction will continue, even if the building collapses before completion.”
He was of the view that unless various town planning authorities begin to include in their monitoring teams, professionals like surveyors, architects, soil test experts and engineers, there will be no meaningful result and the issue of building collapse will continue to occur.
Although he traced the causes of building collapse to such factors as poor quality of building materials, he equally stressed that failure to determine what he referred to as live load and dead load of a structure and the soil texture also contribute.
He said: “Every building has a life span. It is contained in the building design, which was done by the architect. Even in the event of fire, the design contains how long materials like a rod will resist fire before it is consumed if help does not come.
“And the owners know the life span of their houses because it is in their design. But, when the town planning officials mark such houses that have lived out their life span for demolition, the owners will meet them in secret and after money has changed hands, such houses would continue to exist, thereby endangering the lives of the occupants.
“So, to a large extent, the issue of building collapse should be blamed on the government and its agents who refuse to do their jobs and even when they want to, corruption will not allow them to do the right thing.”
He absolved the building professionals, even though he admitted that high fees charged by professionals for supervision, accounts for why some builders engage the services of non-professionals.
He, however, advised that people should be informed and educated on the need to always engage the services of professionals when building their houses.
He believes that when a prospective builder presents his case before a professional, such a professional will always consider the financial capacity of the person involved and charge accordingly.
He agreed that all fingers are not equal but insisted that people should first appreciate the need to engage professionals while building their houses.
He also charged the government at all levels to work on their agencies, even as he urged Nigerians to always adhere to the life span of their structures to avoid the wanton loss of lives and property.
Also, Mr. Chudi Ubosi of the Ubosi Ele and Co, Estate Surveyors and Valuers, maintained that the failure of Nigerians to engage the services of professionals while building is a major cause of building collapse.
He argued that as long as people refuse to acknowledge the role of building professionals, cases of building collapse would continue to plague the nation.
On who should be blamed for the development, he said the first person to take responsibility is the owner of the house, who, instead of engaging professional builders, prefers to cut corners by engaging quacks.
He also blamed non-professional, who instead of advising their clients on the best thing to do, would keep a blind eye so long as they make their own money.
He further informed that the third person to take the responsibility is the government, but insisted that before the government, individuals should do their jobs first.
He said: “It is expected that before you build, you must get approval from the government but most people don’t do that. They just go ahead and start to build.
“And when the government agencies responsible for enforcement get to know, they are bribed and they allow work on such buildings that, most often, do not meet the required standard to go on.”
He advised builders to understand that when professionals give advice, it is not just for fancy, stressing: “they do so because they are professionals who want to avert future disaster, which always comes in the form of building collapse.”
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