A former President of the World Federation of Engineering Organisation, Mustafa Shehu, has said that Nigeria lacks a mandatory national building code that is uniformly adopted and enforced across all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
Shehu stated this in Lagos recently during his paper presentation titled ‘Structural resilience as public trust: Governance, regulation and institutional imperative for a safer built environment in Nigeria’ at the investiture of Dr Taiwo Elegba as the 23rd President of the Nigerian Institute of Structural Engineers.
Shehu, who is also a former President of the Federation of African Engineering Organisations, maintained that the National Building Code, first published in 2006, remains advisory in most jurisdictions rather than legally binding.
The former President of the Nigerian Society of Engineers reiterated that the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria registers engineers and engineering firms but has limited direct authority over the structural adequacy of buildings.
“There is no mandatory national building code that is uniformly adopted and enforced across all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. The National Building Code, first published in 2006, remains advisory in most jurisdictions rather than legally binding. COREN registers engineers and engineering firms but has limited direct authority over the structural adequacy of buildings,” Shehu said.
While observing that the continent has excellent technical standards developed across Africa, he nevertheless lamented that such standards have never been implemented.
“I have seen codes written, published, and celebrated at conferences, then left on shelves while buildings continue to collapse,” he lamented.
According to him, Nigeria’s structural safety challenge is, at its root, a governance challenge.
Shehu emphasised that the country possesses a regulatory architecture like COREN for professional regulation, the Standards Organisation of Nigeria for national standards, state building control agencies for construction oversight, and the Federal Ministry of Works for public infrastructure.
He, however, decried that these institutions operate with insufficient coordination, limited enforcement capacity, and, in many cases, inadequate legal authority to compel compliance with structural safety standards.
Shehu mentioned that state building control agencies, where they exist, are frequently understaffed, underfunded, and lack the technical capacity to review structural designs or supervise construction to modern standards.
“The result is a regulatory environment where it is possible, and indeed common, for a reinforced concrete building to be designed, constructed, occupied, and eventually to fail, without any structural engineer having been formally required to certify its adequacy at any point in the process. This is the governance deficit,” he mentioned.
