Building collapse persists in Lagos despite multiple regulatory agencies

Despite multiple regulatory agencies overseeing compliance with the rules guiding building construction in Lagos,the state is still experiencing incessant building collapse attributed majorly to sharp practices.

Of note is the fact that there is a ministry solely dedicated to physical planning and urban development. Under the ministry are agencies that are expected to provide more specific roles. They include the Lagos State Physical Planning Permit Authority (LASPPPA); Lagos State Building Control Agency (LASBCA); Lagos State Urban Renewal Agency (LASURA) and Lagos State Planning and Environmental Monitoring Agency (LASPEMA).

Aside the agencies under the Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development, Lagos State Safety Commission and the Lagos State Material Testing Laboratory also regulate building construction. But it seems the impact of these agencies is not being felt despite the yearly budgetary allocationto ensure performance of their primary responsibilities or how can the persistent building collapse be explained.
A testimony to this is the building that caved in just a week ago. The collapsed three-storey structure at Ebute Metta area of Lagos resulted in three fatalities. The Lagos State Emergency Management Agency (LASEMA),which confirmed the incident, in a statement, said that on arriving the scene, it observed that a three-storey residential building with a penthouse collapsed.“The cause of the collapse is unknown,” it added, and eight days after the incident, LASEMA has not provided any update on the reason the building went down.

According to LASEMA, between January 1 and November 30, 2023, Lagos has recorded collapse of 23 buildings. The Building Collapse Prevention Guild, in a report recently, revealed that 553 buildings collapsed in Nigeria between 1974 and April 2023, with Lagos State accounting for about 326 of the incidents in the last 49 years. The Lagos figure of the building collapse is about 59.05 per cent of the 553 recorded cases in Nigeria.
The Guild also recorded that there were at least 62 crumbles in 2022, resulting in 84 deaths and injuring 113 persons, with Lagos recording the highest, put at 20 cases. Lagos was trailed by Kano and Anambra stateswith five cases of building collapse each, while Delta and Jigawa recorded four each.

But the statistics from the LASEMA on building collapse in Lagos in 2022 put the cases of building crumbling at more than double the figure presented by the Guild, which claimed that Lagos experienced 46 incidents of building collapse in 2022.

The state government has also expressed concern over the development, though it seems to be paying leap service to the issue, considering the observation that nothing tangible usually comes out of the probe of building collapse. But recently, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu accused real estate practitioners of complicity in the incessant building collapse because, according to him, they do not build according to the property laws of the state.

At a real estate summit organised by the Lagos Business School and the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers, Sanwo-olu, represented by the Secretary to the State Government, Abimbola Salu-Hundeyin, said Lagos was forging ahead to find lasting solutions to the state’s housing concerns.

According to him, there would be more than 30 million people living in Lagos by 2035, and given the state’s limited land mass, there could be a challenge providing affordable housing for the teeming population.

“It is pertinent to state that the increasing building collapses and demolitions recorded showed that the practitioners are not building in compliance with regulations, especially about building approvals, environmental standards, energy efficiency, and quality of material.
“Therefore, the need for us as a government to continuously advocate, monitor and enforce where necessary, the extant regulations and standards become necessary with the application of innovation and quality control strategies and technologies,” the governor said.

Surprisingly, despite government’s concerns, all these cases of building collapse were recorded after the hullabaloo that trailed the collapse of the 21-storey building at Gerald Road, Ikoyi on November 1, 2021 and the presence of many state-owned regulatory agencies. After the Ikoyi incident, there were many stakeholders’ engagements and proposed interventions majorly because of the magnitude of the incident, but it seems nothing was learnt from the accident and many others.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Visland Engineering Limited and former Vice Chairman, Nigerian Society of Engineers, Victoria Island Branch, Christian Okwori, agreed that lessons were not taken from the past incidents of building collapse.

He said: “In all honesty, no lesson has been learnt that is why we keep repeating the evil cycle of setting up committees all the time and shoving suggested measures aside. Like I stated at the last stakeholders’ meeting at Ikoyi, building collapses in Lagos will be a recurrent decimal if we keep ignoring already proffered solutions.”

Some stakeholders and residents had thought that with the huge noise that trailed the Ikoyi building collapse, the menace would have been reduced to the barest minimum. But, there have been several cases of building collapse afterwards, whether last year or this year. Some of the buildings that crumbled in 2023 alone included the two incidents in January, the one-story building in Ikeja and an abandoned two-story building on Olokodana Street, Okokomaiko.

In April, the state also witnessed two incidents of building caving in.These are the three-floor building under construction on Ladipo Oluwole Street, Apapa and the seven-storey building under construction at First Avenue, Banana Island, Ikoyi, Lagos.
Two children lost their lives in July 2023 when a building collapsed on them at Ajao Street in the Ikorodu area of Lagos State. Also, in the same month, a distressed three-storey building located on Jebba Street at Cemetery in the Ebute-Meta area of Lagos State collapsed.

In the following month, August 2023, some construction workers escaped death when the two-storey building they were working on in Ikeja collapsed. In September 2023, at least two persons were hospitalised while others escaped with minor injuries when a building comprising over 500 rooms at Oduntan Street, Kosofe Local Council collapsed. The collapse was attributed to downpour.

Similarly, in November 2023, a woman said to be in her 80s died during a partial collapse of a two-storey building at Borno Way,Oyingbo. There was also another incident in November, following the collapse of a three-storey building at Ikpoh Street, Surulere.

The Chairman, Lagos Branch of Nigeria Institute of Quantity Surveyors (NIQS), Ayodele Alao, in a chat with The Guardian recently said Lagos State alone might have lost about N66.37b to 11 cases of buildings that collapsed around 2021 and 2022.

Giving a breakdown and insight into the figures, he said that about N60b was lost to the collapsed 21-storey building on Gerrard Road, Ikoyi, which occurred November 1, 2021, while another N100 million was lost to the collapsed three-floor structure in Arcadia Estate, off Osapa Village Road, Osapa London, Eti-Osa, a day after, November 2, 2021.
Alao also estimated that about N75million must have been lost to the collapsed three-storey building in Ebute Metta on May 1, 2021 and N50million to the two-floor structure on Herbert Macaulay Way, Ebute Metta, Lagos Mainland, on July 9, 2021.

He added that another N100million was lost in the collapsed four-floor structure at 40, Pike Street, Lagos Island, on July 16, 2021; N100 million to the collapsed two-floor structure at Michael Omotemi Ayantere Close, Flour Mills Estate, Sunnyfield Scheme, Magbon, Olorunda on November 17, 2021. Others are N200million lost to the collapsed four-floor structure on 16, Akanbi Crescent, Onike, Yaba, on February 16, 2022 and N100millionto the collapsed four-floor structure at 32, Ibadan Street, Ebute Metta, on May 2022.

He also estimated that another N100million might have been lost to the collapsed two-storey building on Oye Sonuga Street, Palm Avenue, Mushin, on September 22. Similarly, he valued the building that partially collapsed on Afolabi Alasia Street, Gaskiya Road, Ijora-Badia at N25million.

On the way forward, Okwori said that there was need for bottom-up solution. According to him, local engineers and building professionals must start taking responsibilities and having an eye on building projects within their vicinities as agents.

“Also, whistle blower system needs to be introduced. The Nigerian Society of Engineers members, for example, are present in every local council or have their members living there. They can be given the power of agency to visit project site on their own and report whatever is not right to the regulator (LABSCA) for actions.”

Okwori also suggested that building materials suppliers need to be educated and warned of consequences of supplying wrong or substandard materials and should refuse or report bad contractors doing so.

“The ministries’ efforts are not visible because there has not been clear deterrence with no one prosecuted or named and shamed or convicted so far irrespective of social status. It is hard to successfully enforce, especially with respect to high value or multi-storey structures.”
On her part, a fellow of the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers, Dr Esther Oromidayo Thontteh, said the major issue around building collapse was the unfriendly policy of building permits and building approval plan that make builders cut corners.

She maintained that the officers deliberately make theprocessvery cumbersome, citing an instance of a renovation cum re-modification,which her company wanted to do around Ikeja GRA.According to her, despite the fact that necessary payment was made and documents were presented, for six months the approval was not granted.

“We applied for the planning permit, we paid and we actually used one of the officers of the agency whom we paid extra for her service. Six months after, nothing was done in terms of getting the approval. And we had removed the roof and others in preparation for the re-modification and renovation.

“We kept asking, what are the issues? They said they wanted to verify the approval payment receipts, which was discovered to be original as the money was paid into government coffers.

“One of the officers even said why did they collect money from us and that if the payment had not been genuine it would be very difficult to get the approval. When we went to the office at around PWD, we were just being tossed here and there. At the end of the day, we got to the office that was to issue the permit, only for the officer on duty to say there was another boss that needed to give the approval at another office within the area and that we should go there.

“So, out of frustration, we went ahead to start the renovation cum re-modification withoutthe state government approval after six months and nobody came to stop us from working.

“The processes will be listed and it would look so simple and easy to follow, but there is no way you will not get stuck. And when you get stuck, they will now say that you should have gone through one of them. In our case, we went through one of the staff, but afterabout six months, the officer said it was her boss that could complete the process.

“Up till today, we did not get the planning permit but we have finished the re-modification. A lot of issues like that. You can imagine if a developer had gone to bank and got loans in anticipation that the building permit would come out in two months. And the loan was counting, after three months, if the approval did not come, the developer wouldlook for a shortcut.”

Thontteh said that they had planned the renovation for three months and maximum of six months but they eventually completed the process after a year, with cost of building materials increasing by 25 percent within the period.

According to her, aside the fact that the delay made them to pay more for building materials, they lost rent that should have accrued to them if the renovation had been completed on schedule.
She noted that some developers cut corners, though they do it in connivance with government officials.

“It is very appalling seeing some of the developments by developers. We have developers that build to standard just as we have so many that do shoddy jobs. For example, around Abule-Oja, some of the houses I see, the ‘soakaways’ were constructed inside the drainage. While the construction is going on, state government officials sealed up the place, but two weeks later, the seal was removed and construction continued, with nothing changing, with regard to the illegality.

“The materials used by some developers are sub-standard and within one or two years, the building could start deteriorating, sometimes this leads to the building collapsing,” Thontteh explained.