Government urges regulatory bodies to instill professional standards

To curtail future occurrence of disasters arising from building collapse, the Federal Government has urged built environment professional bodies to instill professional standards expectations in their respective statutory mandates.

Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola who spoke, at the Annual Building and Construction Roundtable organised by the Quantity Surveyors Registration Board of Nigeria (QSRBN) said, that the high incidents of building collapses in the country constitute a major setback to government’s effort of ensuring sustainable housing development projects as a nation.

He insisted that regulation; professionalism and standards must be taken seriously if we must stem the ugly tide of collapsed buildings in Nigeria, called on the agencies of government saddled with the responsibilities of ensuring that professionalism and standards are upheld to see the alarming incidences of collapsed buildings in the country.

The minister observed that some of the tragedies of building collapses are self-inflicted arising from greed, negligence and profiteering tendencies of one or all the parties involved.

Fashola argued that buildings often collapse when rules, regulations and codes guiding the building production processes are breached and compromised, adding that if parties to the building production process play by the rules, incidents of collapsed buildings will be rare if not non-existent.

He said: “ Seldom do buildings collapse in Nigeria because of external and accentuating seismic forces of earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons and tremors. Nigeria is such a blessed country where we do not contend with natural disasters that occur regularly in other countries.

“Protection of lives and property of citizens is the primary purpose of government all over the world and this includes protecting citizens from harming themselves through such acts of commission and omission that can engender building collapses and similar calamities. Because societies have their share of deviants, a robust enforcement mechanism and punishment for those who have erred must be in place to discourage breaking of rules.”

He said that a holistic legislation that enforces provisions of the National Building Code would have brought a lot of sanity into the building production process matrix in Nigeria, adding that the Ministry is working hard to ensure that the legislation comes into force.

According to him, building collapses come with attendant huge financial losses, loss of lives and property including psychological and emotional traumas and physical injuries to the victims.

The minister noted that the National Building Code was produced by the Ministry and approved by the Federal Executive Council since 2006 but the enabling legislation for the enforcement of its provision is not yet in place.

He said that the provisions of this code document constitute the persuasive guide to stakeholders in the building industry to play by the rules.

The minister said that Government has identified the following acts of commission and omission on the part of stakeholders as some of the causes for building collapses in Nigeria. Faulty designs and poor or inadequate design; buildings should be designed and supervised by fully registered and relevant building professionals to deliver structurally safe buildings.

They should also ensure that competent contractors and builders construct such projects. “As we embark on this programme of providing housing for Nigerians, government insists on zero-tolerance for building collapse. As such, agencies of government charged with enforcement of standards, professionalism, regulations and discipline must ensure that no single incident of building collapse is witnessed anywhere in the country under the Federal Government Housing Programme.

The Federal Government has already produced a National Housing Policy to guide the intervention of government in the provision of Housing in Nigeria,” he added.

Earlier QSRBN President, Mallam Husaini Dikko observed that a careful survey of the social and infrastructural landscape of our country will reveal a disturbing scenario of incessant collapse of buildings across the country.

“From East to West and from North to South, the incidents have been increasing in recent times. Apart from huge losses in financial and materials terms, the fatalities that attended most of these collapses have all but compounded and exacerbated the psychological and other trauma suffered by the victims of these incidents, their families and loves ones,” he said.

Dikko noted that attempts have been made by governments at both the State and Federal levels to identify factors responsible for the growing incidents of collapsed buildings across Nigeria and proffer solutions, but the Nigerian Construction Professionals have a role to play in stemming the tide of building collapses in Nigeria.