Owners Of Collapsed Buildings Should Be Prosecuted – Matawal

The director-general, Nigeria Building and Road Research Institute (NBRRI), Prof. Slim Matawal, in this interview with NKECHI ISAAC, underscores the need for more road networks in Nigeria. He also recommends the prosecution of owners of collapsed buildings and proffers solutions to buildings and roads collapse in the country. 
Recently, you held a conference on road pavements. In your assessment, what is the state of Nigerian roads?
The first thing is that Nigerian roads are grossly inadequate for the tempo and drive required for the economy to move forward. We only have a total log of about 200,000km out of which only about 30,000km is paved. For the   size of the country and the fact that options do not easily exist for transportation, this is grossly inadequate.
As to the state of the roads, after construction, most roads are left to deteriorate to a great state of disrepair before any attention is paid to them. They need regular attention to be maintained and the quality of construction is far too low for the roads to have a longer life span.

The National Assembly recently described the mode of road construction around the Airport Road and Kubwa axis (Abuja) as outdated and no longer applicable in modern cities; do you agree with them?
I believe that they are talking with respect to facilities which should be provided on these roads. We are constructing huge roads, but there are no road-markings. Secondly, we need to look at the inter-changes themselves and, thirdly, the control mechanisms for statistical and security reasons, and points where workable toll gates can be situated in Nigeria. I believe that it is with respect to these kinds of standards that the National Assembly would have been talking.
Above that, I think these roads do need expansions, like they are being attended to. In addition to widening them, many tertiary and support routes need to be developed. If we must emphasise road networks, I think a lot of that emphasis has to be made on other forms of transport, especially railways.

Talking of the state of our roads in Nigeria, is the institute carrying out any form of enlightenment campaign to educate people of all these things?
We just had a major capacity-building workshop/conference on May 27, where we comprehensively dwelt on Nigerian roads. We arrived at a set of conclusions and drew up measures to be taken in order to actually tackle the basic problems which you have highlighted. The use of roads, apart from the issues of safety and traffic, which are functions of many things which have to do with user and vehicular characteristics and habits, the maintenance of a road is corporate responsibility. Most roads, especially the ones with the most traffic, belong to governments – local, state or federal. Therefore, they are not individual issue; any works we do are mostly at the professional level and we have emphasized many things in this regard. We are also continually having dialogues with professional bodies, looking for collaborative efforts with international organisations and also looking to see how others do it to see how we can improve within the country.

What are some of these major recommendations from the conference?
There were many recommendations: the first is where we started - Nigeria is in dire need of more road networks, as well as capacity expansion of existing ones. This is in terms of lane dualisation, widening, and the others. It should not just be confined to Abuja, but all over the country. We also agreed that our roads need regular maintenance by responsible agencies in order to reduce the level of deterioration of these roads. We also spoke of deployment of asset management system to maintain all road assets. We also spoke of issues relating to adequate drainage, which can never be over-emphasised, to prevent our pavements from premature deterioration. We spoke about the need for quality control by the Federal Ministry of Works (FMW), consultants, state road networks and road construction companies. We agreed that the Nigerian Building and Road Research Institute (NBRRI) should coordinate the development of quality manuals, specifications and standards, and handbooks, in association with relevant stakeholders and the Federal Ministry of Works (FMW). We also want to check the issue of over-loading and develop things like weigh-bridges in order to monitor the structure of traffic which goes on our roads, and so many other things.
For example, a case study Nigerian roads was brought up, where we measured a number of things that are currently not right, like the thickness of the various structural layers of the road. We specified that no road should have a surface or paved course less that 120mm and we mentioned the base/foundation courses which should not be less than 150mm, and other outcomes emanating from the workshops and conferences.

The incidence of building collapse has been continually dogging the Nigerian state; from a professional point of view, what is the cause of this incidence?
We noticed that from January to April, there was no collapse in the country. Also, since the beginning of the year till July, there has been no building collapse in Abuja, except the one that collapsed last month. I think this is a major step, but we emphasise that there should be zero tolerance. When building started collapsing in Mushin in May, Ebutte Metta in June, Lokoja in May and Kaduna in July, I believe that I gave a paper summarising the situation and suggesting many ways forward. Surprisingly, no newspaper found it necessary to publish the article when it was necessary.
Some of the factors which lead to building collapse are poor construction materials, lack of supervision which has led to the utilisation of poor materials, regulation and primarily the authorisation of building plans by town planning authorities, development control offices, and the rest. In the same vein, if these things are happening, they can lead to the prevalence of unskilled labour, which should have minimal training. Then, we can look at technical issues, like professionalism in construction, to ensure that there is proper investigation on site and introduce issues that have to do with designs. But with respect to the buildings which have collapsed this year, there is the need for proper monitoring to ensure that all symptoms of distress are eliminated.

What other things can be done besides all the things which you have mentioned to curb this incidence?
I want to insist that we can get 100 per cent, which is zero tolerance. If this is done, it becomes an obscure occurrence, rather than one which gets ev eryone worried. Following the recent happenings, I suggested that the owners of collapsed buildings – whether they be ongoing, completed, old or new – should be arrested and prosecuted. I made that recommendation, because it will stem the tide of continuous building collapse and cause many builders to get professional advice. The owners should, therefore, be held responsible. Now, if you hold him responsible and he turns out to tell you that professional A, an architect; professional B, a structural engineer, and professional C, a geo-technical engineer either designed or supervised, we can now go a step further to take those people into custody. But in all, I feel it is the responsibility of the owner of the building to ensure that things are done properly.
If it were an existing building and prior to its collapsing everyone had complained about its state and no one took any action or sought advice, definitely, it will be considered as manslaughter. So, the owner should be appropriately charged for allowing tenants and others to continue to occupy a building that showed signs of distress. To me, this is a new step we can take to stem the tide of carelessness and disregard for the right way of doing things, in addition to having short, medium and long-term plans which are smoothening out. Within a short while, we will reach our goal of developing a curriculum for artisan training, developing a road capacity manual of our road construction firms, and addressing the shortage of skilled manpower - these are some of the measures which should be taken, in addition to sensitising intellectuals and getting the media informed.

What is the update on the NBRRI cement project?
We have gone very far on that. It is virtually 100 per cent completed. The issue of the production machines is a secondary one, but our partners have been forthcoming as regards the issue of having machines on site. The primary objective of the plant is to produce Pozzolana and, as we talk, our installations have reached 100 per cent, and we tested them without load to 80 per cent. The infrastructure (workshops) is completely covered, but we need to raise walls (we can rate this to be 70 per cent, but this cannot stop us from working, because a working environment is all we need). We have brought palm kernel shells, which is the needed fuel; that’s to tell you how basic it is. We have got our first raw material somewhere in the operational area in Ogun State and we are getting set to test the machines 100 per cent loaded. Testing of the machines is not because they may be in bad conditions, but because of the control panel. All the machines are in good shape, including the bagging apparatuses. I can tell you that we are prepared for final testing and commissioning – that is the stage of the project at present.I wish you had visited the plant. The members of the National Assembly were there and they were greeted by a pleasant surprise; they even conceded that many are ignorant of the activities of the NBRRI. That is a fait accompli as far this institute is concerned.
The next thing is the logistics associated with commissioning and selling the products for affordable housing, as well as provide options for the Nigerian public. That requires setting standards. Firstly, whatever material we use, we have to establish its efficacy that it is pozzolanic enough; and we have to test its ability to provide standards for certification. I can say that it is a project that has successfully been accomplished by this institute.

When should the product be expected in the market?
We are not working in a hurry to throw it into the market. Rather, we are working in a hurry to produce the first bag. From the direction we have gone, I am sure that we can produce the first bag very soon. The reason why the emphasis is on the first bag is that with the kind of problems we have (collapsed infrastructure), if we hurry into the market with a product whose application has to be properly monitored, we will only be adding to the problem. However, when we have produced the first bag, as a research outfit, our primary role will not be commercialising, but setting the standards and piloting the right things – which we have done. We believe that we have achieved that. Essentially, we are inviting cement producers in the country and other entrepreneurs to come, and we can tell them, step by step, what they can do to produce commercial products. On our own, however, we will provide limited products to the market. We have the production capacity; the logistics for the production and commercialization are other issues. We want to assure everyone that we have certified the capacity of this country firmly on the global scale, for the technology on the production of Pozzolana in this country. It is in use in other countries; not only in Ghana, but South Africa, because they produce power from coal. The fly-ash, the waste of coal power generation, is being applied in South Africa, by South Africans in Angola, Namibia, Zambia, Kenya, Botswana, Uganda, Lesotho, Burundi, Swaziland, etc, for massive projects, replacing as much as 55 per cent of normal cement. It has been effective and the international community has expressed surprise over its efficiency, and the fact is that Nigeria is keying into it.

- Leadership

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