Bisola David
The latest Building Collapse Prevention Guild study has revealed that Nigeria saw 553 building collapses between 1974 and April 13, 2023.
According to The Punch, the survey showed that Lagos State has a high rate of collapse, with over 326 buildings falling apart over the previous 49 years.
It revealed that 326 collapsed structures in Lagos accounted for 59.05 percent of the country’s total of 553 documented instances during this time period.
According to the data, Lagos State is responsible for 59.05% of the events that were reported in Nigeria. Zamfara only had one known building collapse, which occurred in 2018. The first recorded building collapses in the states of Taraba, Bayelsa, Gombe, and Yobe occurred in 2022. the years 1971, 1975, and 1981 were years that had no recorded collapses.
“There were 62 collapses in total in 2022, with 20 of them occurring in Lagos. Additionally, 12 collapses have been reported so far in 2023.
The research concluded that a sizable portion of the collapses reported during the study period were caused by professional ineptitude, including excessive loads, the use of subpar materials, flawed design, poor construction, and weak foundations.
A recent study conducted by experts in the construction business found that there are now roughly 48,000 construction sites in Lagos State, according to the Chairman of the Lagos State Branch of the Nigeria Institute of Architects, David Majekodunmi.
“That number, when crossed against an understaffed building control agency, showed a huge manpower shortage for the effective monitoring of construction sites in the state,” he claimed.
A former president of the Nigerian Institute of Builders, Kunle Awobodu, attributed many instances of building collapse in Lagos State to a lack of regulations.
He asserted that numerous quacks have gained confidence as a result of the regulating bodies and relevant government agencies’ unwillingness or incapacity to pursue and find guilty those proven guilty of professional misconduct as regarding building collapse.
“I was a member of the committee that established some of the agencies,” Awobodu claimed.
“The creation and execution of policies are distinct processes. One of the things we learned was that the building control agency’s staff size was small in comparison to the size of the built environment in Lagos.
“Quackery is a significant issue as well. Developers must submit their approved plan to go through an approval procedure, which includes examining the structural design to find abnormalities, in order to reduce the incidence of buildings collapsing.”
