•LAGOS State Officials Give Reasons
A few weeks ago, Lagos State Real Estate Regulatory Authority (LASRERA), under the Lagos State Ministry for Housing, held a town hall meeting on “The Lagos Real Estate Emerging Markets-Mitigating The Potential Risks”. It’s the 3rd edition of the conference where thousands are gathered to debate, engage, and proffer solutions to many challenges facing the sector. As usual, the last edition of the conference which was held in Eko Hotel & Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos witnessed a large turnout. The Lagos State officials were also in attendance to engage practitioners in a debate which was an eye opener for many attendees. City People ISAAC ABIMBADE (08155107955) was at the event. Below are answers to the question why buildings collapse in Lagos.
During the course of the discussion, Engr. Funsho Elulade, General Manager, Lagos State Material Testing Laboratory (LSMTL), was asked to give reasons why houses collapse in Lagos.
He started his speech by saying before you build, there is something called conceptualism and even when you have your concept, the first thing to do is where do I locate this concept. You have decided to locate it either on the mainland or the Island which has different terrain and soil strata. The first thing you need to do is to carry out a soil test to determine whether the bearing capacity can withstand several floors you need to sit on it and the test you carry out on the mainland is different from the one you will carry out on the Island. We form a habit in Lagos. The fact that Mr ‘A’.
built and I bought my land beside Mr. A, so of course, it’s adjudged that the land is good. Whereas your side may be foists ground, maybe an abandoned dumpsite. So the foundation that you are going to have will be different from what Mr. A did. In addition to that, a lot of research has been done. There have been over 492 collapses in Nigeria, fleeing to over 1 thousand deaths, of which Lagos State has 295. That’s approximately 65 percent. So we have serious problems in Lagos State and that is why you see all these agencies. We won’t be business as usual because the lives of people are so precious.
And what leads to this is simply unprofessionalism and noncredibility. Most of the people in the built environment know what to do but fail to do it for so many reasons. One, they want to cut corners. Second, construction materials are expensive. Three: the engineer on site has just given birth to a baby boy he’s been finding for 10 years and he needs to make extra money apart from his salary. These are some of the reasons why we have building collapse.
When you look at it, there are about 6 major reasons why we have building collapse. You are talking about faulty foundations. Second, you are talking about weak construction. Three, lack of carry-out tests on the strength of the material you want to use. Some other points include corrosion, natural disaster, etc.
So why did the government established Lagos State Material Testing? It’s to sterm failure in building in Lagos State. And you can say that before the establishment in 2006, what has happened? And anywhere I get to talk about this, I always say it, buildings will still collapse in Lagos because a lot of the buildings that were built before the establishment of this agency, who tested them? Nobody. Except the Julius Berger, etc who has a name to protect. But many indigenous contractors always want to find the fastest ways because probably of the loan not minding the safety of lives.
ARCHITECT GBOLAHAN OWODUNNI OKI
When you talk about the maintenance of the building when you have a small problem with your building, you leave it to dilapidate. Most of the buildings Lagos State Building Control Agency demolished a couple of months ago are due to the negligence of people and the Lagos state government gave them the best solution and that’s why building control is in place.
If you want to build, first, get your building plan approval. Once you get the building plan approval, you then requesauthorizationsation and the reasoauthorizationsation that, doesn’t mean you will or must start your project immediately after you get your approval. Some take couple of months to start. So when you want to start that project, you must write LASBCA that you want to start it and while doing that, there are some documents expected of you to submit. Some of the third parties to these developers aren’t doing what they should do while submitting these documents. Like insurance. Something happened this morning at an on going construction of about 6-7 storey building. An object fell off from the 4th floor on a boy at another site and the boy died immediately. This is why we insist on getting insurance for your building project. It doesn’t have to be 3, 4 storey building before you can get insurance.
When you have insurance and other documents that are expected of you, that’s when you can move to the site. The LASBCA office is filled with different professionals, from geologies to architects. The geologists are there to ensure the proper use of soil tests and to know that the soil test that is given to you from the Lagos State Material Testing Laboratory and I put it to some of you here that you doctor this report. And at the end of the day, an engineer builds on a doctored soil test and we say we are not going to have the building collapse. Why do we have to doctor the report?
