Govt orders seal off of giant buildings under construction

BY NWABUEZE OKONKWO, ONITSHA
Building engineers, under the umbrella of Nigeria Society of Engineers, NSE, are heatedly trading blames with building contractors over the incessant collapse of buildings in the commercial city of Onitsha in particular and Anambra State in general.

* The site of a collapsed building belonging to the St Christopher Anglican Church Onitsha

While the NSE members are accusing the contractors of embarking on building projects without approval by relevant authorities, the contractors feel that engineers often take advantage of every situation to rip-off their clients by over-estimating the cost  of building projects.

However, in what appeared to be an intervention process to checkmate the ugly trend, the state government has empowered a 10-member committee it set up to investigate the cause of the frequent collapse of buildings. It has also sealed off all building projects bigger than a bungalow in all parts of the state.

Handing down the order during his visit to the site of a collapsed five-storey building at Fegge Area of Onitsha, Governor Willie Obiano said that work on any building above a bungalow should be stopped forthwith, pending when the professionals would assess the quality of materials being used for it.

Quality of materials
Obiano also noted that government would set up a laboratory where all the quality of materials to be used for buildings would be tested and approved before anything else.

It was to underline this that he set up the 10-member panel of inquiry on collapsed buildings in the state. The panel has Peter Okpala, an architect as its chairman; while Osita Okafor is the technical secretary, just as the Divisional Police Officer, DPO at Fegge, Rabiu Garba and others are members.

The panel which is currently winding up, has so far identified flaws of any or all of the stages of design through construction. It also noted that failure by building owners and developers to comply with building regulations, or the architects and engineers, contractors as well as government agencies or officials to perform their duty in compliance with established building codes construction requirements.

The panel attributed most of the collapse to late change in design, altering the method in which the rods supporting the beams or pillars were connected to them, and inadvertently doubling the forces on the connection.

They, therefore, recommended some solutions to the ugly incidents which included that the state government should establish a regulatory course for practitioners in building industry, provide adequate sanction on the deviators and employ experts on architectural designs and structural engineers into the state urban development board to control and regulate buildings in the state.

Members of the Nigerian Society of Engineers, NSE who spoke to newsmen in Onitsha on the development, included Emmanuel Nwankwo, Onitsha branch chairman; his predecessor, Christian Uzom; Ike Otubelu, Chief Inspector of Engineering Regulation Monitoring, ERM, a body established by the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria, COREN and  Eugene Ejikeme, also an engineer.

Nwankwo, Uzom, Otubelu and Ejikeme informed that in Onitsha, engineers have been having a running battle with contractors, until last year when the engineers obtained a court order in their favour.
The experts absolved engineers of blame in respect of  buildings collapse, adding that the contractors do not engage the services of engineers in most cases.

They, therefore, advised contractors to employ the services of COREN members so that any problem arising from the contract would be heaped on the engineer.

They attributed the buildings collapse to substandard rods, use of light weight stones and shabby mixture of concrete materials. They disclosed that if Obiano had not ordered stoppage of work of high buildings and ordered every developer to go to COREN for re-certification, no fewer than 150 more houses would have collapsed in various parts of the state because investigations have shown that most of the buildings springing up in Onitsha and its environs did not conform with the required building standard.

* Gov Obiano and Bishop Owen Nwokolo at the site of a collapsed building belonging to the St Christopher Anglican Church Onitsha

They confirmed that as a result of the order, the committee has so far sealed no fewer than 150 high-storey buildings still under construction in various parts of the state, pending when their materials would be tested at the newly set up laboratory.

Reacting to the allegation, a prominent contractor in Onitsha, Chief Damian Nweke, blamed engineers and even the government for bureaucratic bottlenecks and extortions when it comes to approvals for building projects, adding that developers prefer to hire contractors because engineers charge double what contractors charge for a project.

Nweke, however, noted that the double charge or bureaucratic bottlenecks should not be used as an excuse by contractors to do shoddy jobs that could lead to building collapse and probably kill some people since it would amount to ‘penny wise, pound foolish’.

He said that any person who is not qualified to handle a building project should not be registered as a contractor in the first place as there must be a yardstick for ascertaining who is actually a contractor and who is not.

Some of the property owners in Onitsha, Chief Patrick Ikenta, a patron of the Nigerian Union of Journalists, Anambra State council; Chief Emmanuel Chinemelu (a.k.a World Bank), a big time importer; Chief Okwudili Otti, General Manager of the Caltec group and Chief Gilbert Bravo Obi, chairman of Nigerian Importers Association, blamed some businessmen for bringing substandard building materials into the country.

Ikenta, Chinemelu, Otti and Obi who also attributed the trend to developers looking for a way to save costs, urged government to be strict in registering or engaging registered engineers so as to know who to hold responsible and who to prosecute and whose license would be withdrawn in the event of the collapse of any building.

They also urged the Standard Organization of Nigeria, SON, to go round the markets and fish out all substandard materials, adding that developers should limit their buildings to three or four-storey
In recent time, many buildings had collapsed at their roofing stages in the state, especially in the commercial city of Onitsha, with the latest being a five-storey which went down on Saturday July 5.

The building which was located at Aloy Offia Crescent, within the  Old Mercedes Lorry Spare Parts Market, Nkpor, an outskirt of the commercial city of Onitsha, damaged about four vehicles parked near it.
Eye-witness informed that the ground floor of the building was erected many years ago and was being used as a private nursery school until about two years ago when the owner sold it out to someone else.