Pass The National Building Code Bill Now A six-storey guest house belonging to the Synagogue Church of All Nations recently collapsed, killing over 100 people, most of them foreigners. The building, according to reports, was originally a two-storey building said to be less than four years old, which the church decided to expand. It was also reported that the building had no approval from relevant agencies of the Lagos State government. Officials of the Lagos State Building Control Agency (LASBCA), in the wake of the incident told journalists that the collapsed structure had no approval, but the church fired back, saying that no contravention notice was served on it before the collapse. This is just one incident. There have been several cases of building collapse in the country, with the attendant loss of life and revenue. According to the Nigeria Institute of Building (NIB), 84 buildings have collapsed in Nigeria in 20 years, with most of them occurring between 1999 and 2009, claiming at least 400 lives. In a study conducted in 2012, Dr Adedeji Adeniran quoted the NIB as saying that investigations into cases of building collapse had revealed that at least 50 per cent of the incidents were due to design fault, 40 per cent to construction fault and 10 per cent to product failure. Another study, according to him, also revealed that 37 per cent of building collapses can be traced to carelessness and greed on the part of construction professionals. Building collapse leads to loss of life, money and investments, and is also not good for the image of the country. Each time a building collapses, building plan approval, the professionals who worked on it and the quality of materials used are some of the issues that come up. A National Building Code is before the National Assembly waiting to be enacted into law. The bill will make the building code operational. The Senate recently mandated its committee on public housing to organise a sensitisation public hearing on the matter. This, however, is not enough. The code specifies minimum acceptable standard for the final product. All professionals in the sector, namely builders, architects, estate surveyors, quantity surveyors, town planners and engineers, argue that there is the need to make the code operational, as this will eliminate quacks. When the law is passed, all persons involved in the building process will be registered and licensed and can have their licences revoked if negligence on their part caused a building collapse. However, it is pertinent to point out that the problem in Nigeria is not the absence of laws, but their enforcement. We, therefore, call on professionals in the sector and regulatory bodies to ensure that the law, when operational, will be effective enough to enable professionals to undertake their duties appropriately.
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 08:24:58 +0000
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