By Maiwada Dammallam
The recent collapse of a 21-storey building in Ikoyi, Lagos, is another avoidable tragedy that Nigeria shouldn’t have witnessed given numerous similar tragedies caused by identical professional and administrative lapses. By now Nigeria should have developed an effective method of dealing with willful negligences to protect the lives of innocent citizens striving to eke out a living in what’s now reduced into a deadly sector.
It’s very critical to identify the whys and hows skyscrapers are collapsing with a alarming frequency in Nigeria. Unless the laws of physics no longer applies in Nigeria as in other places across the globe, then it’s imperative for the Federal Government to streamline and enforce both the scientific and administrative laws in the construction sector to enhance the safety of workers and economic viability of the sector.
Skyscrapers don’t just fall to the ground without a reason. Each collapse is for a deliberately neglected avoidable reason. It took a 747 Jet fully laden with passengers and jet fuel to bring down each of the two 110-storey World Trade Center towers after standing for decades without any sign of structural fatigue. Why, then, should an embryonic 21-storey building easily collapse to the ground in Nigeria without as little as being assisted by the gentle breeze of the Atlantic Ocean as recorded on the tragic morning?
The answer is simple, in Nigeria everything goes and incidences like this only attract the attention of government and citizens while they lasted. Of course, there will always be panel of inquiries that will be made to look busier than worker-bees in a beehive by the media only at the end of the bazaar for the panel to release a neither-here-nor-here white paper which contents will agreeably never address the problem given the many white papers on building collapse flying around competing for space with debris from collapsed buildings.
Without enforcing accountability in the building sector, buildings will continue to collapse in Nigeria. There will always be a contractor and a government official willing to put the lives of innocent citizens on the line just to put few more Naira notes in their pockets. It’s in our genes to compromise quality for profit and to subvert the law for personal gains. The Ikoyi building collapse is a glaring proof of the seeming genetic deficiency among Nigerians. If a businessman successful and buoyant enough to invest billions for a complex like the Gerrard building or the contractor lucky enough to get the contract for building the tower could succumb to the temptation of compromising quality for personal gains by putting on the line the lives of innocent citizens who could barely make ends meet, I wonder who could.
The Government is no less culpable. Without punishing previous incidences, the government only confirmed its blindness to the deadly corruption in the sector. Man, by nature, is not so law-compliant. Actually that’s why taxpayers contributes money to pay for the services of security agencies and law enforcement agents just so they could have somebody enforce the law. Why is it not working in Nigeria as in other places? Is it lack of political will to implement our laws? I hope we find this answer before the next building collapse. Bad as it may sound, it’s not a matter of if but when unless there’s a miraculous change of national attitude to issues by all involved.
Needless to say, I’m wholly in support of commensurate compensation to the victims of this round of carelessness.
