The COVID-19 nationwide and global lockdown imposed might have achieved its purpose in curbing the spread of the pandemic. But for mischievous property developers with a penchant for cutting corners and violation of development requirements, it provided them with avenues to clandestinely contravene development guidelines and regulations in the absence of the monitoring officers of the authority to checkmate their excesses.
The immediate post-COVID-19 period witnessed a series of devastating building collapses in the country. In November 2021 there was the collapse of a 21-storey building in Ikoyi, Lagos, an incident described as one of the worst tragic of all cases with scores of fatal casualties, the developer inclusive. A few months later, we witnessed the collapse of another 7-storey building in Banana Island. Many other cases of the tragic incidence were reported in Enugu, Anambra and Abuja.
It was reported by the Building Collapse Prevention Guild that between 1974 and 2023, Lagos alone recorded 326 building collapse incidents, representing 49 per cent of the total 553 cases in Nigeria. To city managers and regulatory institutions in the building industry, the end of the lockdown was an uptight period with both diurnal and nocturnal hours of security and rescue operations to salvage the lives of trapped victims within and underneath the rubbles resulting from building collapse.
The FCT Authority received a distress call in the late hours of August 25, 2022, of a building collapse in Kubwa, along Hamza Abdullahi Street, off Gado Nasco Road. The incident occurred at about 10.30pm. Some site workers, the security, and others, totaling seven people were trapped in the building at the time of the collapse. At the end of the rescue operation which lasted almost 20 hours, five people were saved, unfortunately, two lives were lost.
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Investigation revealed that the initial building on the land was a shopping mall, but the developer later commenced the development of two other floors above the initial structure, on which he was served with enforcement notices by the Control Department, but the desperate developer flouted the orders, and utilised the unfortunate opportunity provided by the subsequent COVID-19 lockdown to illegally continue.
Upon resumption of the enforcement at the end of the lockdown, the developer resorted to working at night and at weekends to beat the prying eyes of the monitoring officers. In fact, at the time of the collapse late in the night, tiling was ongoing. The whole construction activity thus got transformed into criminality. That was why immediately after the collapse, the authority declared the developer wanted to face prosecution.
Any developer desirous of upgrading the status of his property could legally achieve his purpose, if before the commencement of construction, he submitted his building designs to the Development Control Department. If the statutory requirements were met approval would be automatically granted. If not, he would be made to make the necessary corrections aimed at standardising the designs and make a resubmission for the continuation of the approval processes. All these are to guide the developer in order to prevent any mishap in the development. The implementation must be in line with what was approved.
To others who are nonprofessionals in the building industry, the process which aims to safeguard lives and properties, could be cumbersome and highly demanding. However, life, security and freedom are more valuable than all that can be financially spent. Hence, the necessity for complying with these laid down rules and regulations no matter how weighty. Because whatever could be saved from cutting corners from the process would turn out to be worthless when the unexpected occurs.
Example with this desperate developer, in the end, he could not have the shopping mall, nor the residential flats he was developing at the upper floors, as all collapsed. Unfortunately, it included the lives of two innocent workers. When he was declared wanted he went on the run, trying to evade arrest, which in the long run he couldn’t. When finally convicted, even his freedom would be lost. A situation akin to being penny wise, and pound foolish.
Other lessons derived were that the monitoring activities by the public officers must not be tied to only the working hours and days. Emergency management operations, as city management activities and preventions for occurring, are not respecters of work-free days of weekends, public holidays, population censuses, election periods and any form of lockdown. Thus, not only health workers, public electricity, water and security agencies are essential service providers. The development control monitoring and enforcement officers, emergency management agencies and the like must also be placed in this category, if not yet in it by all public authorities in all the tiers of government.
This discussion is centred on building collapse only. But the other emergencies are fire incidences and flooding, all of which antecedents were mainly the results of poor or lack of adequate planning or poor or negligence in monitoring and implementation.
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