A lawyer and former Lagos State Commissioner for Housing, Bosun Jeje, has proffered solutions to the incessant building collapse in all parts of the country, warning that, if approvals granted developers are not monitored effectively, the menace would not cease to recur.
Jeje, who made the observation at an interactive session with newsmen in Lagos, said after the approvals for construction given the developers, the next step to take is strict monitoring of constructions in the sites.
“It is not just the approval, you see many of the developers taking the approvals and going ahead to have sub-standard materials in the construction of those approvals they have. So, we need to have effective monitoring of those approvals after they have gotten them so that we don’t have issues of collapse buildings again,” the concerned former commissioner asserted.
According to him, the root cause of building collapse mostly is sub-standard materials because developers are ready to make profit at any cost by using only five bags of cement instead of ten bags, lamenting that, “they are ready to compromise at any level so that they can have the construction going on.”
Jeje then emphasised that to forestall that, “it is now the duty of the monitoring aspect to ensure that right materials are used,” just as he then appealed to the citizens again to ensure that “they use the right materials so that we do not have repeat of sad incidents as it happened in Lagos recently.”
While admitting that developers could be blamed, he agreed that the government should be encouraged to have the political will to take decisions on whatever it has said, regretting that absence of required political will led to some of the defective buildings still standing up till date.
“But once you have decided and you are ready to take the bull by the horns, you would not have the buildings still standing up. Once they are marked for demolition, you go ahead to demolish them. And if you need to rehabilitate some people, then you have to make provision for that,” the concerned lawyer cum political activist said.
As a lawyer, the vocal activist saw nothing wrong prosecuting any developer that is found guilty of using sub-standard materials that eventually led to building collapse, asserting that, “once a building has gone down, and it is discovered that sub-standard materials are the root cause of the collapse, there is nothing wrong in prosecuting the developer.”
Jeje further said: “The approval aspect is going to be looked into. We have to ensure that every building has an approval. Outside the approval, there must be the monitoring aspect. We must monitor structures that are being constructed. We must look at it and ensure that right materials are used. These are the measures that will stop the collapse of building. Once you do not monitor them, developers are ready to compromise at any level. But when they know that the monitoring agents would soon be around, or that they could come around at any time, they would try as much as possible to ensure that they comply with the building instructions. Those are just the aspects we have to reinforce. If we don’t do that, the menace would continue.”
