Nigeria and incidence of building collapse

The rash of building collapse in the country has become something of national embarrassment. No month either passes without the sad news of buildings at construction stages or even completed collapsing in one part of the country or another. Incidentally, the construction workers or occupants become victims of such tragedies.
Much as the incidences of building collapse are not spontaneous, the attitude of the regulatory authorities has become very predictable. That is why contractors, surveyors and town planning authorities involved at one stage or the other in building construction are never contrite whenever such tragedies occur. Rather, they carry on as if those incidents are meant to happen anyway.
Building experts have adduced many reasons for the frequency of building collapse in the country. Prominent among them are the use of low quality building materials coupled with employment of incompetent artisans and weak supervision of workmen on site. In addition, they posit that such tragedies were due to non-compliance with specifications/standards, use of substandard building materials and equipment and the employment of incompetent contractors. Moreover, they point out the non-enforcement of existing laws and endemic poor work ethics of Nigerians at large.
Others are faulty construction methodology, improper design, poor town planning approval/development process and economic pressure. Some other remote factors include absence of soil test report, inability to carry out proper land survey, failure by foremen to understand and interpret building codes and lack of coordination between professional bodies in the industry.
We believe it is time the authorities take adequate and concrete steps to stem these incidence in the interests of the country’s reputation, including those unfortunate to find themselves at such spots when tragedies occur.  However, how serious government at all levels and their agencies take the enforcement of standards, supervision and regulation building construction nationwide holds the key to stemming the malaise. For example, in 2014, the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), in response to incessant cases of building-collapse in the country, gave October 1, 2014 as deadline for sand, concrete and allied products manufacturers to comply with new cement and block codes, among others. It is debatable how far the SON has gone in enforcing compliance until today.  We therefore call on the authorities to enact a National Building Code and put in place a Construction Industry Commission (CIC), training and retraining of building practitioners and strict adherence to quality building materials according to specifications. Building collapse is a very serious matter that federal government, state governments and professional bodies and other relevant stakeholders should rise against.
Moreover, time has come for Nigerians to desist from always passing the buck or putting the blame squarely on poor-quality cement, fake iron rods, greed of foremen and utter disregard for building and construction laws with intentional neglect for the safety of the occupants to putting in place punitive measures to ensure engineers or architects who supervise the erection of such substandard buildings are made to face the full wrath of the law