REDAN tells FG to Arrest developers of Abuja collapsed building

The President of the Real Estate Developers Association of Nigeria, (REDAN) Dr Aliyu Wammako, has called on the Federal Government for the arrest of the developers involved in the recent building collapse in the Gwarinpa area of the Federal Capital Territory,(FCT) Abuja.

Wammako said, “Most of the iron rods used in the building were iron 12, and were supposed to be iron 16 for that purpose. The professional who supervised the building should be arrested because he is an architect of the collapse.”

He stated that professionals do not need to compromise at the expense of human lives.

“The most important issue is that this area belongs to the Federal Housing Authority, but it is under the FCT administration. There are different issues here, areas that are supposed to be residential and areas that are supposed to be commercial.”

The REDAN boss claimed that everywhere in Gwarinpa had been turned into a commercial area, which constituted a big problem.

He said, “I blame the FCT administration because there is supposed to be an oversight function supervising the development of buildings to ascertain that they are adhering to the National Building Code. Also, I blame the National Assembly, because we in the real estate industry business believe there are regulations everywhere else except Nigeria.

President of REDAN said “We proposed a law to regulate the real estate industry to the House of Representatives, but unfortunately this bill has been passed by the Senate in the past eight months, because of the slow nature of what is being done, the bill is not out yet. If this bill is enacted into law, it will address the issues of building collapse, because if people are adhering to the National Building Code, the ugly incidents of collapse would not happen again.”

On his part, the Executive Director of the Housing Development Advocacy Network, (HDAN) Festus Adebayo, called on the government to set up an investigation team to look into the recent building collapse.

Adebayo said, “The question you would ask is there is no monitoring team who are assigned to monitor building projects from the beginning to the end? On this note, we are asking the government to set up an investigation team to unveil who the criminals are short-changing the country and causing the loss of lives.

“The FHA has their development control unit inside the Federal Capital Territory, and the FCT also has their own development control unit. The question is who really is responsible for the supervision of the Gwarinpa project.”

The Executive Director of HDAN called on the government to ask for the logbook of the professions involved in the project that blinded their eyes to the poor-quality materials.

Also commenting, the National President of the Nigerian Institute of Town Planners, Nathaniel Atebije, stated that supervision by chartered professionals was crucial.

Atebije said, “You will observe that about 10 years ago when we were having a building collapse almost every time, a policy came up stating that because of the shortage of manpower in the development control system of FCT, it was decided that whenever a building plan is granted approval, there must be a chartered professional who will undertake to monitor it. If it is in the development control of that person, such a professional’s certificate should be collected and used as collateral, because his certificate is his life, integrity and competence.

“This nation has no value for the lives of its citizens and this contradicts the provision of this nation. In terms of construction sites, we have a lot of things to be done to protect people on construction sites, for example, insurance cover.”

 He recounted that there was a time when artisans ensure that a building is approved before commencing work on such sites, which was a security measure for their lives.