[Viewpoint] Why Buildings Fall Down in Nigeria?

Last week a colleague had said to me: what do you think is the cause of the recent 7
storey building collapse in Ikoyi, Lagos? I paused for a moment and pondered on how
best to respond to this question. While several thoughts went through my mind, he
suggested: “could it be a structural error from design?” I replied: “it could be, but to
suggest that it is, would be jumping into a conclusion. We wouldn’t know, till the
circumstances leading to the collapse has been fully investigated and a forensic report
released. At least for a “sane clime”, as it is loosely called, this is an even-handed
answer. But it suddenly occurred to me that it is Nigeria. Who is going to investigate
what? And what forensic report? In 2022, Nigeria recorded over 61 incidents of building
collapse in 2022. As I write this article, I don’t know of any forensic report on any of
these incidents, or do you? See, nobody is actually going to do any investigation on this
failure, and it would in fact, happen all over again.

As for my friend and colleague, I do not know why the 7 storey building in Ikoyi, Lagos
collapsed. It could be a design error as he has speculated. What I do know is why
buildings fall down in Nigeria and this is my comprehensive response on the subject.

If you do a simple google search on why buildings collapse, the usual culprit includes
inadequate design, poor workmanship, use of substandard materials, illegal alteration
and modification et al. All of these terms can be grouped into technical and human
factors, as this writer as previously written somewhere. ‘Faulty design’, ‘alterations’ and
‘modifications’ can all be grouped under technical factors, while use of substandard
materials and poor workmanship are human factors. Hence you can think about
technical factors as issues around design and implementation and human factors as
purely human and procedural issues.

Albeit, there is no statistics to back this claim up, however, I dare say that, if a forensic
audit is conducted on structural failures in Nigeria, human factors would turn out to be
responsible for nearly all structural failures. Neal Fitzsimons describes human factors in
more precise terms as “the four horsemen of the engineering apocalypse: ignorance;
incompetence, negligence and avarice.” You can analyse all major structural failures in
Nigeria by simply considering these four “horsemen.” Indeed, structural failures in
Nigeria are a reflection of societal failure. It is almost always going to be the case that
someone somewhere was either ignorant, or incompetent, or negligent, or got paid to
controvert a building approval process.

Take the case of the 21-storey building in Ikoyi that went down in November 2021 as a
case-study. According to official yet unconvincing information in the public glare, this
was a building originally designed for 4 floors, along the line was reviewed to 15 floors
and then the developer went ahead to add 6 extra floors. Anyone who understands the
standard process of building approvals knows that approval is a continuous process up
until the close of the project. Each major construction stage has to be scrutinized by
control agency before a formal approval is granted for the construction stage to happen.

What comes to mind is: In the case of the ill-fated 21-storey building, how was it
possible to add 6 extra floors without the notice of the regulatory body? For instance,
who vetted and gave approval for the 21 st floor? Could it have been the case that the
building regulation agencies weren’t aware of this change? Who gave the approval? In
fact, what are the odds that you would add just one floor without approval and without
the notice of the building regulatory body? I don’t know if your guess is as good as
mine, but my answer is zero, at least in the FCT and Lagos.

The answer to these disturbing train of questions is that people saddled with the
responsibility of ensuring that building collapse do not happen were compromised. To
put it succinctly, some people in government were aware of this change, they were in
the know of these infractions, they were also aware that the structural engineering
consultant had pulled-out on account of these infractions and how the project was been
executed. However, all of these meant nothing to them and so they did nothing.

I have argued elsewhere that many of the problems facing the engineering profession is
deeply rooted in unethical behaviour.