By Kingsley Adegboye

LAGOS, which the state government considers a work in progress mega-city, is not new to buildings collapse having recorded several tragedies in that regard in the past several years. Indeed Lagos was once again in the news over another tragedy following last week Tuesday collapse of a five-storey building in Lekki Gardens in Lekki area at the state that the over 30 lives.

As with past building collapse tragedies, this recent incident has continued to elicit reactions bordering on grief, outrage and condemnations by members of the public, while the state government had responded with punitive action by sanctioning the contractor which handled the building construction on behalf of Lekki Gardens, the property owners, as well as the chief executive officer of Lekki Gardens, Mr. Richard Nyong.

Scene of the collapsed building at Lekki , Lagos.

Obviously outraged at the high toll in lives lost, the Lagos state government had vowed to bring all those responsible for the tragedy to book.

Monitoring of buildings

And in fulfillment of its vow, the state government last week sacked the General Manager and another staff of Lagos state Building Control Agency, an agency responsible for monitoring of buildings whether old, new or under construction in the state to ascertain their fitness, for their alleged compromise in the Lekki Gardens building collapse while the CEO of Lekki Gardens and the contractor that handled the collapsed building are in the police custody till the completion of investigations into the collapse which are expected to last for 30 days.

But the sentiment in many informed circles is that though Governor Akinwumi Ambode has done well and in a very courageous way by wielding the big stick on these government officials, nothing short of prosecution of those found culpable would suffice as a deterrence now and in the future. Meanwhile, questions are being asked why these individuals have only been given official reprimands instead of being arrested by the police and taken to court as was the case with Mr. Richard and one of the contractors handling the project. The two young men are to remain in police custody on the order of an Ebute-Metta Chief Magistrate Court for the next 30 days pending the completion of investigations by the police.

The duo are being punished ahead of their trial based on claim by the Lagos State government that the company illegally added two additional floors to the building in defiance to approved plan by regulators and for which the site was sealed.

The state government went further to claim that: “ In a brazen act of defiance and impunity, the owners of the building, Messrs Lekki Worldwide Estate Limited, the promoters of Lekki Gardens, criminally unsealed the property and continued building beyond the approved floors”. This explains why police prosecutor, Godwin Osuji, informed the magistrate court that an ex-parte application had sought to remand the defendants beyond the constitutionally prescribed period in the interest of justice, public safety, public order and morality. But questions are still being asked why the government officials are not detained by the police.

It may be interesting to know at what point Lekki Gardens, which is reputed to have delivered 6,000 affordable housing units in four years of its operations with an additional 10,000 units in the pipeline in Abuja, Port Harcourt and Lagos, became such an irresponsible corporate citizen.

This organisation is also said to have about 250 people in direct employment and another 10,000 indirectly employed. What kind of signals does this send to other investors in the industry? Lekki Gardens has been in existence for just four years. The company has, within this short period, impacted heavily on the housing sector in the country, building and managing 57 estates in different parts of the country, with no single case of building collapse in any of the estates. It is therefore difficult to understand why a company with such impressive record would decide to cut corners on just one out of the many structures it has handled. It just doesn’t add up.

The tragedy of Lekki Gardens, like others before it, occurred because relevant government agencies failed to do what they are statutorily set up to do. The claim that the company ignored the original approval for three-storey structure and decided to raise the building to five floors suggests that construction of the building was supposed to be done under the supervision of a regulatory agency. If that is the case, at what stage was it discovered that the company had acted outside the approval it was given? For the government to claim that the developer exceeded the approved number of floors, it means that it was aware that the building had risen above the approved level. This is because it is not possible to determine from the rubble the height of a building when it was under construction.

The government also claimed that the building had actually been marked for demolition, but that its owners allegedly cleaned off the demolition sign and continued with the building. The question now, is why didn’t the relevant agency move in to stop work on the building and possibly arrest the developers of Lekki Gardens and prosecuted them. This could have averted the tragedy.

Speaking at a press briefing last week in Lagos, National Chairman, Nigerian Institution of Civil Engineers, Robbie James Owivry lamented that It was a rather disappointing and embarrassing experience that this sort of incident could occur in a country that boasts of seasoned civil engineers that can hold their own with any civil engineer anywhere across the world.

Owivry added that it is unfortunate that Nigeria is still grappling with man–made problems of this nature at this age, whereas other nations of the world are battling with the challenges of natural disasters like flooding , landslides and earthquakes.

According to him, infiltration of the construction industry by non-professionals at the expense of trained professionals is a major cause for concern and “l think the time has come for us to have a considerable thought for this menacing situation. The negligent attitudes of members of the public that patronize developers indiscriminately calls for caution.

“There is nothing wrong in seeking the services of developers, but it is wrong not to carry out investigations on the profiles of developers to ascertain if they have qualified civil engineers in the execution of their projects. Embarking on a high profile project requires the involvement of a qualified civil / structural engineer. Anything short of this amounts to an abuse of construction ethics and the effect can be catastrophic.

“I will like to reassure members of the public that there is nothing to worry about as far as the competence of the Nigerian engineer is concerned. We are up to the task of constructing safe and habitable buildings. All the cases of building collapse investigated till date have not indicted one single civil engineer. It is only cases of non-engineers parading themselves as engineers that have been found guilty”, Owivry said.

For the president of the Nigerian Institution of Structural Engineers, a division of the Nigerian Society of Engineers, NSE, Oreoluwa Fadayomi, although it is too early to explain the cause of the collapse because investigations are still ongoing, however if due process, due diligence and standard materials were used during the construction, the collapse wouldn’t have happened. According to him, a combination of design and construction supervision could have been responsible for the collapse, adding no one is certain about quality control applied by the firm which constructed the building on behalf of Lekki Gardens.

“But if due process was adhered to, by using the services of built environment professionals and adhering strictly to due diligence, the collapse would not have happened”, he noted.

Speaking in a similar vein, Mr. Kunle Awobodu, president, Building Collapse Prevention Guild, BCPG, and a former chairman of the Lagos State chapter of the Nigerian Institute of Building, NIOB, said due process was not followed during the construction of the property, as built environment professionals were not engaged by the developers and promoters of Lekki Gardens, owners of the collapse structure, just as due diligence was not applied in the construction process of the project.

Awobodu who stated that standard should have been introduced right from the beginning of the project to the end while monitoring from stage to stage was equally neglected, said a five-storey building on reclaimed land will no go through normal, insisting that Lagos state Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development would have given the developers of the project approval on a five-storey building project on a reclaimed land. He said approval was given for three-storey building by Lagos state Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban development, but the developers raised the structure to five-storey building. Substandard houses

“The fact that we are in dire need of housing does not mean that we should build shoddy or substandard houses. Professionals should be engaged to play necessary roles in the built environment sector,” he said.