149 buildings stand distressed in Lagos as 40 demolished

JOSHUA BASSEY
Some 149 buildings are said to be standing distressed across Lagos State, as government confirmed the demolition of 40 structures in a move aimed at averting collapse and resultant loss of lives and property of residents.
Rotimi Ogunleye, the state commissioner for physical planning and urban development, who confirmed the figures while speaking with newsmen, Monday, said 38 other identified distressed buildings had been earmarked for removal in the next phase, while others would follow suit.
According to Ogunleye, all illegal developments and contraventions, including those built on drainage channels will be brought down.
“In a systematic approach to curtail occurrences of building collapse, 149 distressed buildings were identified at different locations out of which 40 of such have been removed, while the next phase of 38 of the structurally defective structures have been earmarked for removal,” Ogunleye said.
Giving details of how the distressed buildings were discovered, the commissioner said officials embarked on audit through the Lagos State Material Testing Laboratory, and in the process, visited all the local councils in the state to inspect ongoing construction sites and completed buildings suspected to be distressed.
“Consequently, 1,842 sites were visited; 1,392 test advice notices were served and information on buildings identified as distressed obtained,” he said.
Other activities, he said, from April 2017 to March 14, 2018, a total of 2,023 planning permit applications were received with 1,237 approved and others at various stages of processing, while due to adoption of technology to fast-track the process through the Electronic Planning Permit (e-pp) platform, applicants can now have their permits within 10 days.
He said in order to clear the backlog of applications and to encourage regularisation of developments without permit, the state has also granted six months amnesty starting from March 1 to August 31, 2018, advising property owners to fully utilise the opportunity.