Group urges government to establish stations to monitor earthquakes

The Building Collapse Prevention Guild (BCPG) has joined in the call for the establishment of  additional seismological stations to monitor crustal movements in the identified earthquake-prone areas in the country.

The group also urged the government to invest in earthquake electromagnetic precursors monitoring devices that are capable of monitoring foreshocks, main shocks and aftershocks of any future earthquake event.

Barely a year ago, BCPG drew the attention to the possibility of Nigeria experiencing earthquake and the need for the government to be proactive by reducing the spate of substandard building construction across the country.  Mild earthquakes, recently, occurred in parts of Oyo, Bayelsa, Rivers and Kaduna states.

According to them, vibrations accompanying the earth tremors resulted in the collapse of mud houses and infliction of visible cracks in modern buildings within the affected areas. This development has clearly ossified the harbinger on the possibility of Nigeria having an  earthquake induced disaster in the near future.

In a statement signed by its National President, Kunle Awobodu and National Publicity Secretary, George Akinola, the group said: “A nation without an effective national building code will end up in ruin in an occurrence of an earthquake. Enforcement of building regulations without compromise will prevent serious calamity in the future.”

The group called on investors in buildings to be concerned about the durability of the buildings they are funding. “In an earthquake disaster, the vulnerable, substandard buildings have always been the major cause of high death toll. And unfortunately in Nigeria, the National Building Code is legally and practically not in existence.

“Prospective homeowners and developers in Nigeria that they should endeavour to follow due process and avoid quakes. Government should pay due attention to building construction from the scratch by strengthening ministries of physical planning and development control, and also uphold the tenet of professionalism in the nation’s building industry,” BCPG.