KADUNA/Nigeria: The Director General of the Standards Organization of Nigeria (SON) Osita Aboloma has assured Nigerians that his organization is putting measures in place in ensuring that the rising cases of buildings collapse in the country becomes a thing of the past.
Mr. Aboloma expressed this on Tuesday April 30 in Kaduna, during a General Sensitization on Building Collapse, organised by SON in collaboration with Leading Ideas International Limited.
Represented by the SON Regional Coordinator North West, Abba Adamu (Galaje of Bauchi) he said that the Federal Government is worried about incidents of building collapse.
“We support government policies through quality assurance. Lives and property are being protected. We educate people that they should follow due process from searching of the land for the proposed building to the finishing.
“They should ensure that they use professionals. Each professional bodies have ways of dealing with detractors, a move that will stop the use of quacks,” he said.
In an interview with newsmen on the sidelines of the Sensitization, State Coordinator SON Kaduna, Mr. Emmanuel Datti said that the sensitization programmes is important because collapsed building incidents are becoming daily affair.
“When it happens, lots of lives and property are lost. Our expectations are that the awareness created will have huge impact.
“If the stakeholders are aware of the dangers and causes of the collapse, they will avoid short cuts, when building and bring the right engineers and people like surveyors, architects and engineers,” he said.
Also fielding questions, the consultant, Nweze Chamberlain, Director Programmes Leading Ideas, said that the programme cannot be overemphasized.
“Incidents of building collapse are becoming something else. They are not spiritual things but problems we can nip in the bud if the right materials are used and right experts are used for the jobs,” he advised.
For Engineer Paul Oke, Head of Construction Management, SON, Abuja, the Sensitization programme will create awareness and provide a guide for best building practices to prevent collapse.
“It is to bring to knowledge of people that there are standards that guide building to conform to standards and the collapse of building with substandard materials will become a thing of the last.
A participant, Engineer Moses Ekwezie Ogu of Integrity Blocks and Building Kaduna, said that he learnt a lot from the programme.
“It Is really loaded because the facilitator gave us step to step ideas on how to ensure proper quality of building materials.
“We also realized that poor design and monitoring can also lead to building collapse. We want government to engender a platform for ease of doing business,” he said.
Another participant, Parisa Hauwa Hassan Builder 2 of KASUPDA said that they are concerned about rising cases of building collapses.
She explained that they have a monitoring department, concerned with standards and mode of construction.
“We ensure you do the right things to curb building collapse. I have learnt more on building collapse and impressed that SON came into this to end building collapse,” he added.
