Builders task Buhari on building collapse

The Building Collapse Prevention Guild of Nigeria (BCPG) has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to help prevent substandard building construction in order to prevent incessant building collapse in the country. President of BCPG, Kunle Awobodu, who stated this in a statement, said the discipline and integrity  of the president are required to sanitise the Nigerian […]

The Building Collapse Prevention Guild of Nigeria (BCPG) has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to help prevent substandard building construction in order to prevent incessant building collapse in the country.
President of BCPG, Kunle Awobodu, who stated this in a statement, said the discipline and integrity  of the president are required to sanitise the Nigerian built environment.
He noted that collapse of buildings in the month of September when Buhari’s government marked its 100 days is a wakeup call on the issue of substandard construction in the Nigerian built environment.
Awobodu identified low staff strength, bureaucracy, poor methodology, sentiments, cowardliness, compromise, corruption and lack of enforcement as the major bane of physical planning and building control operations in the country.
According to him, the problem of building collapse in Nigeria is largely man-made, adding that in the past when there was orderliness in the system, building collapse was not common but the system gradually collapsed and the nation descended to the era of impunity and lack of respect for rules and regulations.
Awobodu called on government to do the needful by instituting a system for registering developers towards effective monitoring of their construction works.
“Both the Federal and States’ Ministries of Physical Planning and Building Control Agencies should be reorganized, sanitized and strengthened for better implementation of the established regulations. They should be headed by professionals of high integrity that have natural passion for standard construction and enviable physical planning,”
He added that enforcement units should be established to support the ministries and agencies while enumeration of building sites should be carried out so as to determine the staff strength required to monitor such construction sites.
“Cost of Certificate of Occupancy and building plan approval should be reduced to encourage prospective land owners and developers to obtain them because possession of land title documents and building plan approval documents enables them to access bank facilities and reduce the rate of litigation on land matters,” he said.
He however called for the eradication of substandard building materials in the Nigerian market.