Quacks Behind Incessant Building Collapse – Experts

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Quacks Behind Incessant Building Collapse – Experts

Nkechi Isaac

— March 11, 2014

Over the years, Nigeria has faced the challenge of buildings collapsing in various locations across the country with enormous loss of lives and property. This development has been causing governments at different tiers as well as the people deep worry. Experts have been brainstorming on how to address this ugly situation with little or no visible result.
In an exclusive chat with LEADERSHIP, the chairman, Nigerian Insitute of Town Planners (NITP), FCT Chapter, Mr. Nathaniel Atebije, said the incessant occurrence of building collapse in Nigeria was attributable to the activities of quacks.
He said instead of using qualified builders, some developers chose to use masons and artisans whose expertise did not go beyond mixing cement, chippings and sand to execute their building projects, which he described as a recipe for tragedy.
He said: “As an institute, our stand is advocacy, to plead with the people to make sure that the right people do their job. We encourage prospective developers to make sure that they reach out to qualified hands so that they don’t experience building collapse.”
Highlighting steps taken by the institute to curb the use of quacks in carrying out building projects in the country, Atebije said the operation of quacks had been minimized in the practice of urban and regional planning in the FCT with the introduction of professional stamps and seal.
“The institute has been able to enforce the use of professional stamps and seal as evidence of professional handling of projects especially for site analysis report for location plan, layouts, master plans as well as environmental impact assessment (EIA) reports,” he pointed out.
He expressed the hope that the success of the exercise would result in the enforcement of professional stamps and seals as evidence of professional handling by other chapters of the institute.
It would be recalled that the institute in charge of supervising and monitoring builders in Nigeria, the Nigerian Building and Road Research Institute (NBRRI) had made several concerted efforts at curbing the recurrent building collapse in the country.
Only recently, the director-general/chief executive officer (CEO), NBRRI, Prof. Danladi Matawal blamed the development on the use of poor quality materials in building construction.
He said: “The poor applications and use of inferior materials especially concrete, has been identified as a major causative factor for collapse of buildings in Nigeria. The failure of structures by explosion denotes that there was poor concreting on site.”
Added to this, Matawal said were improper foundation and lack of subsoil investigations, pointing out that “the terminology for foundations in Nigeria is blinding which is grossly misleading because it could be responsible for many of the collapses. This is because blinding is the process of ground preparation in order to provide an even surface upon which the actual foundation of the structure can be built.”
According to him: “If a foundation is not properly designed it may lead to the catastrophic collapse of the soil beneath the foundation, when the shear strength is inadequate to support the applied load or it may lead to the excessive settlement of the structure which will take place due to the distortion of the soil mass as a result of applied shear stress and in part due to the consolidation of the soil as a result of increased normal stresses.”
The NBRRI helmsman also elucidated that building collapse in some cases could be attributed to the overall design of the structure and site supervision.
“Most collapsed buildings which has been witnessed in Nigeria belongs to private individuals, who from all deductions did not get guidance for their structural design from qualified engineers. They fail to pay attention to the most critical structural framing elements from the bottom, which is the order of sequence construction, foundations, columns, beams, slabs, roof members, staircases in reinforced concrete and many other steel structures. This omission by private developers has led to building collapse with high fatality,” he added.
He further said that Portland cement, which accounts for 90% of all the cements produced globally also has a critical role to play in aesthetics of buildings.
Giving short term measures to reduce collapse incidences in the country, Matawal said that the Institute had not been idly observing the trend of building collapse without putting actions in place to curb the incidence.
“NBBRI has considered the need for the use of some sensitization bill boards campaigning and sensitizing on the use of quality materials, employment of appropriate technical personnel to design and supervise building construction,” he stated.
He listed other measures to include organizing conferences, workshops, seminars and training programmes for the continuous professional development (CPD) of stakeholders.
Matawal also said that NBRRI intended to set up a materials testing laboratory for testing soils, cement, concrete, bitumen and asphaltic concrete products and other construction products in Abuja while improving the national laboratoty in Ota as well as contemplate zonal and even state laboratories in the future.
Some of the long term measures proffered by the NBRRI boss include the decision to establish a NBRRI academy to train and provide skilled labour for the construction sector in the areas of draughting, detailing, iron bending, artisanship, block making and laying brick concrete and mortar artisans and workmen, plumbing, electrical works and others.
He tasked the tertiary education sector especially the universities, polytechnics and monotechnics, technical colleges on the need to work assiduously to empower students with the appropriate and practical knowledge to tackle the challenges of the Nigerian technological aspirations in the construction sector.
In his recommendations, the development control boss said that the establishment of materials testing laboratory would facilitate carrying out integrity test for buildings. He also suggested the use of Outdoor Broadcasting System (OBS) for physical monitoring of construction site to check excesses by site engineers.