Site engineer in charge of the three storey building that collapsed last Friday at Shogoye area of Ibadan, failed to honour the state government’s summon for Wednesday.
The state government, through the Director-General, Bureau of Physical Planning and Development Control, Mr Waheed Gbadamosi, said it had on
Monday summoned the site engineer over the incident where trapped site
workers were later rescued alive, Gbadamosi, however, said he waited in vain in his office for the site engineer to come and explain, in writing, reasons behind the collapse.
Gbadamosi, who, in a phone conversation, confirmed the development,
however, said the state was poised to report the case to the Council
for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN).
For his non-appearance, he warned that the site engineer had put
himself at risk of being deregistered by COREN.
“The engineer has refused to honour our call. We are reporting him
officially to COREN,” Gbadamosi said in a text message to
Tribune Online.
Gbadamosi added that the site engineer signed an undertaking with the
Bureau of Physical Planning and Development Control, that he would
supervise the collapsed building from foundation till he gets
certificate of completion.
“When you complete your building, you must come back to tell us. Then,
we will come and examine whether you are worthy of being given what we call a certificate of completion. You will pay a token, like N25,000, we
will give you. If we don’t give you the certificate of completion, it
means the building is not worthy of being inhabited by any individual,
not even goats,” he said.
Gbadamosi noted that the preliminary reports on the possible cause of
the disaster revealed that standard materials were used for the
construction, but that they did not allow the curing period to lapse
before they continued with the construction.
“When you do your decking, you must allow it to cure for 21 days
before you start to put blocks on it. But they did not allow that
three weeks to lapse. I think they were in a hurry to complete the
building,” Gbadamosi said.