The Ebonyi government said on Tuesday that it would welcome investigations by independent bodies to unravel the cause of a collapsed two-storey building in Abakaliki, on June 18.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that two trapped construction workers at the building owned by a serving state legislator were rescued alive while other workers escaped unhurt.
Chief Sunday Inyima, Ebonyi Commissioner for Capital City Development and Urban Planning, said this in Abakaliki while conducting a team from the Nigeria Building and Road Research Institute (NBBRI) round the debris.
“The government needs the truth on the cause of the collapse and that was why I inaugurated an investigative committee on the issue.
“The interest shown by independent bodies in conducting investigations into the incident gives us hope of unraveling the remote cause of the collapse,” he said.
He said that the government’s investigative committee was jointly headed by state chairmen of the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) and Council of Registered Builders of Nigeria (CORBON).
“Your own report will be different from the state government’s committee and if we get a unified report, it will mean that a good job has been done.
“When there are differences in both reports, we would review such differences to unravel the true cause of the collapse.
“We hope to get recommendations from both committees that would help in forestalling future building collapse in the state,” he said.
He thanked the team for rating Ebonyi very low in occurrences of building collapse, assuring that efforts would be intensified to forestall such occurrences.
The Leader of the team, Prof. Akaolisa Ezeagu, said it was constituted by NBBRI Director-General, Prof. Samson Duna, to investigate the cause of the collapsed building and recommend ways of forestalling such.
Ezeagu commended the commissioner for conducting the team round the scene and for providing relevant documents among others that would assist the team in its assignment.
“We are not in Ebonyi to witch-hunt anyone but to conduct scientific based investigation into the collapse and providing documented recommendations to forestall future occurrences.
“Building collapse has become a national menance but we are happy that Ebonyi ranks very low in such occurrences.
“Our recommendations on forestalling building collapse assist federal, state governments and developers to learn relevant lessons in checking such ugly occurrences,” he said.
He called for concerted efforts from stakeholders to check building collapse due to inherent fatalities and economic losses.
NAN reports that the team conducted relevant tests on the building’s debris and interfaced with relevant authorities in the state’s housing and construction sectors. (NAN)
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