Imagine living in a three-story building and enjoying a quiet time. Then suddenly, the iron beams snap and the building pillars and blocks start to crumble. And confusion follows.
And while you are still at a loss trying to make meaning out of the confusion, you are knocked flat to the floor of the quaking building – trapped and barely able to breathe as debris and rubble fall down in sheets. And there is no way to escape to safety. What a cruel fate! Not many who had this shock encounter are alive to tell their stories.
The lucky ones among them are either maimed or have lost property they laboured to acquire in the past years. Some have not been able to have them replaced since the ugly incident happened. In 2013 alone, a series of buildings have collapsed across the country, with Lagos in the commanding lead. Yesterday, Ebute-Metta, a popular community in Lagos, was thrown into confusion, as a three-story building collapsed, trapping many occupants.
In Umuahia, four family members were wiped out on May 15 when the house they were living in collapsed. Similar disasters have also occurred in Ibadan and Abeokuta. In Ikorodu, Lagos, a building collapsed in the first quarter of this year and claimed lives.
While the nation sulked, in May, a three-storey building in Ojodu collapsed, killing two artisans working on it. On June 11, another three-storey building on Agege Motor road in Mushin, collapsed and killed some occupants, including women and children. About 300 occupants of the building were left homeless. Some sustained various degrees of injury and are being treated in hospitals. Over the years, the collapse of buildings in the country has been a recurring decimal.
There is hardly any quarter where buildings don’t collapse in various towns and cities. On every occasion, outrage is expressed, with the government vowing to punish owners of the buildings. Some state governments allegedly try to appropriate the lands on which the houses once stood. Ironically, despite some real and imaginary measures, more and more buildings have continued to collapse.
Yet, there is no let up to the menace, as there is no guarantee that more buildings standing at the moment will not collapse just like the others. Against this backdrop, some experts have been speaking on the menace and why there might be no end to this spate of disaster threatening to destroy the remnant of the goodwill the construction industry still enjoys.
Engineers Sina Fakeye and Agunze Chibueze Ikokwu insist that building collapse in the country is a phenomenon driven by an aggregate of factors that are yet to be addressed. Fakeye, a structural engineer, told Daily Sun that “these factors range from poor design and materials, and improprieties at the building approval stage, to the failure of the regulatory authorities.
It is a multi-faceted challenge. On one side, we have problems associated with the professionals and the regulators. On another side, we have problems that have to do with the manufacturers of building materials – steel, cement, building blocks among others.
If the professionals do their own part of the job and the regulators too, what about the manufacturers? And what about the steel we are buying in the market? Are they appropriate for the job they are meant to do? What about the blocks we are using?
Are they strong enough to do the job we want them to do? These are the challenges.” Commenting on the trend that has increasingly assumed a national embarrassment, Agunze Ikokwu, chairman, Bulk Construction Company Ltd, lamented that the building industry in the country has become an all-comers affair. He explained that for a building to endure, it must be done by the right professionals. “For us to stop the spate of building collapse in the country, anyone who wants to erect a building must have to go about it properly.
Every building has to be designed by a qualified architect. There has to be a structural engineer to look into the building’s structural elements; there have to be mechanical and electrical engineers to guarantee the lighting adequacy, that the cables are correct, and a quantity surveyor at inception to cost the project. The right mix of professionals ought to be brought in to execute the building construction.
“I suspect that what happens to most construction efforts in the country is that people dabble into this thing, either at the private level with all the enthusiasm, only to find out that the cost of construction materials is prohibitive. So they begin to cut corners by using sub-standard materials. And the end result is that the materials cannot take the strength of the structure. And what we have is the horrible news that another building has collapsed.”
Speaking further, Agunze Ikokwu, a civil engineer who is also a multi-disciplinary fellow, insisted that “every construction work calls for detailed attention. All of them need to go through all the elements I have just pointed out in order to guarantee safety of our structures. This has to be so because we are dealing with load-sharing elements, and if we don’t get them done right, funny things may happen.
And so we really must get things right in terms of those who will be involved in the building or any other form of construction, be it highways, flyovers, harbour or aviation facilities and so on. They all need the right mix of professionals who will execute them at every stage. Every building project needs to be appropriately cost so that one won’t be cut in the lurch midstream when the pocket goes dry.” Agunze Ikokwu explained the need for those executing projects to respect the regulatory authorities.
He said: “People must learn to respect these regulatory authorities by allowing them do their jobs properly for the good of the society and humanity.” He observed that building collapse was a universal phenomenon, adding, however, that there were various lessons to learn when they occurred so as to prevent future recurrence.
“The truth about building collapse is that it is universal. But when it happens, the right thing is to find out why it happened so as to make corrections. Some collapse happen as a result of natural forces.
But when it is by human error, that is where the problem comes in – people using the wrong reinforcement bars, wrong cement aggregate mixture, underutilised materials due to cost constraints and failure to go through the right rigours required in the industry.
That is why we always advocate that whoever wants to carry out any project should use the services of those who are trained for the job. If this is not done and disaster occurs, lives are lost.” Going further, he blamed population explosion in the cities for the growing trend, saying it was because of the overwhelming demands for office and residential accommodation that many buildings were collapsing every now and then.
“We are seeing population explosion because of the high demand for office and residential accommodation. Buildings that were constructed in the 1970s are increasingly being converted to accommodate more people simply because of rising demands. This is often done without the approval of the authorities.
Naturally, the structural elements involved and the adequacy of the building to carry the loads are not evaluated. Oftentimes, we have seen that when the approval is got, some people go outside the mandate to construct something outside the approval they got. This is where another problem comes in.”
He then advocated total enlightenment, tightening of the regulation governing building approval and construction and stiffer penalties against offenders as a way out of the mess.
He also suggested empowering the building regulatory bodies so that they could do their jobs properly, and a synergy between government and the regulatory bodies as some of the measures required to curb the menace.
Similarly, Mr. Fakeye suggested that “the way out of the problem is for everybody to pull their weight together, the professionals, engineers, builders, the regulators, the manufacturers of steel, cement, blocks and others. We need to join forces to tackle this menace, and the right time is now.”
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