A 21-storey building under construction on Gerard Road Ikoyi, a highbrow area in Lagos, collapsed on November 1. This adds to the already huge number of collapsed buildings in Nigeria’s commercial capital, with loss of many precious lives. All around the country, there are also records of building collapses, resulting in deaths and economic loses.
In the November 1 catastrophe, 39 bodies — and still counting — have been recovered. Nine survivors,too, miraculously made it out alive, ferreted from the heaps of rubble by a search-and-rescue team. Still, many more are not yet accounted for. More worrisome: no one seems to know the exact number of persons in the building at the time it crashed. We commiserate with the families of the dead and sympathize with the wounded.
This very sad incident has generated a lot of outrage amongst Nigerians. As usual, analyses, rumours, lies and half-truths are being peddled on both the orthodox and social media. Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu cut short his official trip to Rome, Italy to attend to the emergency. He has set up a six-man independent investigative panel to probe the immediate and remote causes of the tragedy. The state government has equally suspended Gbolahan Oki, the general manager of Lagos State Building Control Agency (LASBCA).
Mr. Oki’s claim that the building was approved for 15 floors, instead of the 21 that collapsed, may have angered his employers. Deputy Governor Femi Hamzat had since cleared the air: of the tri-towers under development, two were approved for 15 floors — and the pair still stands; the collapsed one was for 21 floors. Still, some documents have hit the public space to suggest we may not have heard the last of the approval controversy. Facts are better than speculation, so we stick with Hamzat’s official line as we cannot rely on internet buzz. The independent probe panel thus has its job cut out. We will separate facts from fiction after its 30-day probe. Gov. Sanwo-Olu’s intervention was therefore timely.
While we commend the quick action of the state government in setting up the panel, we recall the unusual frequency of building collapse in the state — at least in the last five to 10 years. We believe the state government will go beyond post-tragedy setting up of panels. Nevertheless, we expect the present panel to rise up to the challenge; and its finding would help birth stringent policy regulations that will totally banish any such disasters in the future.
Still tracking past building crashes, we still recall the March 2019 collapse of a three-storey building housing a primary school on Lagos Island. Some pupils perished in that crash. We also recall the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) Guesthouse collapse of September 2014, at Ikotun, a Lagos suburb. More than 100, most of them South Africans, died in that crash too. Aside these two, many other buildings have collapsed; and there are legitimate fears the Ikoyi tower may not be the last, except drastic steps at rigorous regulations are taken. Just too many buildings, in many parts of the state, are in bad shape!
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As fatalistic as many Nigerians tend to be, many buildings that collapse are not natural disasters. Most of them are preventable, even if accidents do occur. Indeed, negligence, inertia and lack of a sense of duty, by various institutions and personalities that shirk their responsibilities, contribute to these avoidable tragedies. A blame game comes handy at the heat of each disaster and frankly those involved could be blame-worthy: errant building owners or sponsors, wayward contractors and failed regulators. Still, the rot goes deeper than we often assume.
The society seems structured to fail, almost from all angles. Diligence seems taken for granted. That is why just anyone that shows interest accesses leadership; no deep character questions are asked, as often the least competent find themselves in leadership. Policies are often wrong-headed. Education, the foundation of all activities in a modern world, does not get the desired attention. The family unit, the society’s very microcosm, seems disintegrating, resulting in a lax moral fibre. That has blunted the sense of right and wrong, in what is euphemistically tagged the “Nigerian factor”.
So ab initio, the society, from the family unit, tends to have lowered the levers of probity as parents often assist their children to cut corners academically and even socially. So from home to school, there are teachers who do everything but teach. Some take gratifications and even demand sexual gratifications for marks. So sometimes, half-baked students are awarded degrees they least deserve. What happens with their professional lives after is better imagined.
Our graduates are in all professions and at all leadership levels. So they get to become the doctors, the engineers, the surveyors, the teachers, the builders, the architects, the politicians, the public servants, the artisans and everything in between. It can only be imagined what those with very poor sense of accountability and diligence produce as a collective.
So we ought to ask: how many vocational skill schools does Nigeria have that can train those that work in building constructions: carpenters, master-builders, masons, electricians, plumbers? How well do we equip these artisans? How rigorously do we insist they conform to strict quality and high standards?
Many collapses have been blamed on the use of substandard building materials. Might more rigorous building regulatory agencies have impacted better and averted these crashes? How far has the hammer fallen on the personnel of these agencies that fail to do their jobs, thus courting avoidable disaster? Quality monitoring and inspection of building materials is as important as having professionals handle their areas of professional competences.
The collapsed tower marks the growth area in property development — service and luxury apartments, in tony locations, for the upscale market. That frenzy is catching on, suggesting the luxury bracket of the Nigerian building market is booming and coming of age. But have the skills-set, commitment to rigorous standards and professional temper of all the cadres involved scaled up? Are the regulators upping their game to match the demands of that high-end market? These critical questions must be answered in the affirmative, if we must stave off putative future disasters.
We commend the Lagos State government for setting up a helpline for families of victims. We also believe that the general information flow to the public must be improved so as to earn the trust of the people. Given the constitution of the probe panel, we expect an independent and credible outcome that would be proof of the members’ professionalism and sense of justice.
With the nouveau riche craving for luxury apartments and housing estates, our governments must be more diligent in monitoring standards and products. Professional bodies too must earn respect based on specific and measurable outputs. Accidents happen but most building collapses could be prevented. Enough of wanton waste of lives from our sloppy building culture.