If only because of his young age and dreadful circumstances of his death, it is understandable if Nigerians weep for erstwhile almost faceless property magnate, Femi Osibona. It is also human that Femi Osibona’s tragic death would attract both positive and negative public outpourings even though this is not the first (nor will it be the last building) to crash in the famous city of Lagos. Like it or detest it, Lagos remains the first or the eventual destination of any Nigerian aiming at improving himself.
After sifting through public cacophony over the Gerrard Avenue disaster which so far, recorded forty-four deaths, the indisputable facts were not only that innocent Nigerians lost their lives but also that something went wrong far away from standard stipulated building construction regulations, which, in an organised society, are mandatory to avoid a history or repeat of the Gerrard Avenue disaster. This is not to say that regulations the safety of building designs are necessarily secure or water-tight anywhere in the world either in the past or the future. The point is that even with the best intentions and near-perfect with the most strict regulations, buildings can still collapse with attendant fatal casualties
Even as far back as 1955 (that was before Nigeria’s independence in 1960), building structures collapsed in Lagos. St. Peter’s primary school on Lagos island collapsed. killing five pupils. But the building was an old one which never gave signs of sudden collapse. The tragedy alerted federal authorities to carry out inspection and repairs of other schools in Lagos. Also, about five months ago in Florida, United States one of three twelve-storey tower blocks killing ninety seven Americans, some of them irretrievably.
However, Nigeria’s case is peculiar especially after independence. There was this gradual degradation in the quality, quantity of products of every, day use, performance of artisans as well as lack of will on a national scale to enforce regulations inherited from the departing colonialists. On top it, there was the tendency of stakeholders in private projects and financiers of public projects to make maximum profit from minimum effort.. Federal and state authorities never appeared to care a hoot about this disturbing dereliction of duties. A field day crept in for the “get rich quick” Nigerians, both high and low. Those Nnamdi Azikiwe once described as young old Nigerians and old young Nigerians are today’s living witnesses of how we arrived at this situation and the reliable high standard we enjoyed in the colonial era.
The following may appear too pedestrian but all the same, are the best illustrations of even the diet we had or the modest accomodation parents provided. The story is different today with speculations ever past decades that even Nigerian importers prevail on their foreign business partners and manufacturers to drastically reduce the standard or quality of products or drugs meant for Nigeria. We are therefore engaged in group suicidal self-deceit by either pretending to be or are actually mourning the fatal victims of Gerrard Avenue disaster. They are gone and no longer stand the risk of further disaster in this country.. Those of us, living
Nigerians should mourn in advance for the disaster ahead from inevitable collapses of malstructured buildings connived at by those who, otherwise should enforce building regulations. The guiding principle remains the same: maximum profit from minimum effort. In any society, the Gerrard Avenue disaster should be a lesson for everybody to discard our get rich quick aspiration. But shall we?
Many factors were responsible for depreciation of standard. Key among the lot was influence peddling, such that gives building construction stakeholders/financiers upper hand at any time to override the rulings of civil servants responsible for enforcing laws regulating building constructruction. Was it true as alleged by the Chairman of the Lagos State Building Construction Agency that the collapsed building was approved for only fifteen storey project rather than the ambitious 21 which sank the building and 44 Nigerians? The Chairman has since been suspended from office. Whichever was the case, how does the suspension encourage civil servants henceforth to discharge their duties fairly, firmly and professionally without any fear of being harassed or even losing his job in case of another building tragedy?
Consciously or unconsciously, unlike in the colonial days, collapsed buildings arising from poor structures, these days have become regular affair especially in Lagos. Could that be because we improved or compromised (on) the regulations for building construction? Every convenient reason is employed to circumvent standard building regulations — ethnicity, religion, blackmail, etc. If a church storey building in Lagos and killed over fourty worshippers, mainly owing to sub-standard/inadequate building materials, must the hands of government be tied from necessary punitive action by claiming such would amount to victimisation of Christians? And for that, litigation was exploited to halt necessary punitive action. Any wonder that Gerrard Avenue building also got mired in controversy and, once again, death of innocent Nigerians.
To appreciate the gravity of Nigeria’s degradation in these matters, we were never in this poor situation under colonial rule. Those buildings constructed over one hundred years ago still stand firm in Lagos and many parts of the countryside. The blocks were made from burnt red bricks and at the worst, even ordinary mud, but all under very strict and enforced regulations of the white man. The buildings were merely plastered with cement of high quality and remain concrete till today. Such buildings on Lagos island which would have retained their strong standing, have mostly been raised from attractive various bungallows of those days to unsafe storey buildings of two or four to provide earnings from shop rents. Today, it is a great risk passing by such buildings which can collapse at any time like some already crashed. To imagine these were the same buildings we live or areas we plied as youngsters is provocative. Who approved such violation of building regulations? Idumagbo, Olowogbowo, Igbosere, Bangbose, Lafiaji, Okepopo, Princess Aroloya, Palmchurch, Adeniji-Adele, Balogun, Oko Awo, Docemo,
Tokunbo and Broad streets, have all been transformed into slums.
What we grew up to learn was that a bag of cement would produce about twelve solid cement blocks. Nobody would nonchalantly break such a block into pieces. The story is so cheap today that a bag of cement will produce unlimited number blocks, depending on the management skill of the builder and the house owner or the project financier to minimise costs
for maximum profit. It is also uncontrolled harvest time for breeders who today produce chickens for hen, cocks and turkeys of those days when for example, only one turkey was enough for a Christian family at yuletide. Time there was when only a cube of sugar would take a cup of tea to the required taste.. Neither would you require more than two or three cubes to empty a bowl of gari on a hot afternoon. Today, it is a struggle for the same exercise between your appetite and diabetic status. Who controls or measures the quality and quantity of iron pipes or iron rods for building projects?
Whatever an engineer’s stipulation in quality and quantity of iron rods for a building project depends entirely on the stakeholders in the building industry, since regulators are easily derided. Who approves such blatant violation of building projects? For years, we have been flaunting Ajaokuta. Where and how effective are the products? Our moanings and groanings on collapse of buildings will continue.
The tragedy of a money launderer
It started dramatically and ended more dramatically in an open unprecedented physical struggle between prison guards and EFCC operatives on whose side would take instant custody of the convicted former chairman of the Pensions Commission, Rasheed Maina. The first point of interest is that as usual, Nigerians have forgotten or had been made to forget that Maina looted billions of naira which he deposited in various banks. With his arrest imminent, Maina absconded from the country and after sometime, with the confidence of someone who already made contacts and would be back in office on a higher scale. Indeed, the prospects were that he might have emerged with the status of a deputy permanent secretary.
However, a vigilant section of the Nigerian press leaked the whole conspiracy. It was disgraceful and embarrassing as everyone of the liars denied any knowledge of the plot to re-absorb a criminal suspect into the civil service. Here was a criminal earlier declared wanted by the EFCC, and yet in a clandestine conspiracy with his ethnic collaborators , Maina gave the impression of being above the law. Expected, his backers ran for cover and abandoned him. Incidentally, a bizarre incident occurred before he absconded from Nigeria. A section of the leadership of Nigerian Union of Journalists met Maina and declared him innocent of all criminal charges he was facing. NUJ? But for ethnic solidarity, where, when and how did NUJ come about its trial, discharge and acquittal of his criminal activities to warrant exoneration which, in any case, remains the prerogative of law courts? What was the special interest of that section of NUJ in the criminal charges against Maina?
The row over the futile clandestine attempt to re-absorb Rasheed Maina into the civil service was not without its heavy casualty. A former head of the civil service, in an innocent and obviously desperate attempt to prove she did her best not to be seen as supporting Maina’s misadventure. Obviously, she panicked, moreso as a section of the press leaked her report. Events so happened one after another leading to her sudden undeserved removal, moreso as that event only succeeded in diverting public anger from the real issue, the Maina affair. With the court verdict sentencing Maina to jail, it is obvious that it was very mean to have ruined the career of that former head of federal civil service.
With the failure of all his attempts to get himself reinstated in the civil service, Maina was later charged for all his criminal activities. Again, the man claimed all innocence such that earned him bail except that a criminal will always behave to type. Maina jumped bail until he was re-arrested in Niger and brought to Nigeria and re-arraigned without bail. For bringing back Rasheed Maina from abroad and getting him convicted for laundering two billion naira, an amount belonging to pensioners, the Nigerian Government has retrieved its erstwhile image of treating the convict as a favoured one.
The current NUJ leadership must restore the reputation of the profession by undertaking a full investigation into all circumstances leading to the conspiratorial ethnic clearance a previous leadership offered Rasheed Maina, something too disgraceful to be allowed to remain part of our history.