Taiwan will work with Nigeria to overcome building collapse —Ambassador

Taiwan Representative and Head of Mission in Nigeria, Mr. Andy Yih Ping Liu, said the country is ready to work with Nigeria to overcome building collapse and real estate challenges. Speaking during the Annual General Meeting of FIABCI, Nigeria Chapter in Lagos, You Ping Liu, suggested the adoption of Taiwan model for the promotion of standard building and real estate development in Nigeria. He also advocated government’s regulation and collaboration between the public and the private sectors in promoting standard building development. To build a better house, he emphasised that it would require the implementation of government’s regulation, adding that Taiwan development experiences could be a useful reference for Nigeria. He narrated how Taiwan suffered natural disasters such as earthquakes and typhoons, but came out better.

“Taiwan suffers all the natural disasters that you never have in Nigeria. So that’s why our development experiences can be quite a useful reference for Nigeria,” he said.He pointed out that Nigeria needed

construction companies to follow the regulation.

Besides, he said the nation also needed the actual construction workers and architecture to guarantee that  building is built with good concrete and good quality of building materials.

“That would take a lot of governmental monitoring and also the regulator to monitor how the building has been built,” he said.

He said that it’s extremely important  to have a good administration to implement those regulations.

According to him, government officials have to be trained well to monitor and  to see whether a particular building is well designed with a good reputation of architecture, and  whether the design has come up to fit into the regulation.

When it comes to the actual construction,  the Taiwan ambassador to Nigeria said  there has to be a regular inspection and monitoring from both the government and also the representatives from the professionals.

“They have to work together. It will not be just single-handed kind of thing. Public and private sectors must work together to prevent building collapse,” he said.

On what Nigeria and Taiwan share together in terms of real estate, the diplomat said that Taiwan’s expertise in the construction of Taipe 101 tallest building could also be useful to Nigeria.

“Real estate means you have to look into the way either you build housing estate or commercial building, or like city planning that will combine good transportation to facilitate people to move around. This is all in one picture. It’s not a separate thing.

“So in the real estate, we will have to focus on whether the people can actually live a good living environment and to have a strong building that puts shelter on their head and also to have good transportation to facilitate  movement of people around. So this is how real estate will be developed well for any general public. And this is how Taiwan can provide our experiences for helping people to do that.

“Our Taiwan experience particularly would be able to provide our expertise to counterbalance of the natural disasters. You don’t have earthquake, but you have flooding. Like Taiwan, we have typhoon.

When typhoon comes, we have all kind of flooding and landslide. It happened here in Nigeria, right? So, for your emergency response agency and our emergency response agency can work together to learn from each other how to cope with the natural disaster and then come up with a solution how to help people to build a better house.”

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