Minister of Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Malam Muhammad Musa Bello has described the collapse of building in Gwarimpa, the Abuja suburb as an indictment on the entire system.
“The Gwarinpa building collapse though developed by a private person and wholly supervised by the Federal Housing Authority, it is an indictment of the entire system.”
The minister spoke at the weekend when he received in audience, the Managing Director of the Ahmadu Bello University Consultancy Services, Professor Suleiman Karwai in his office in Abuja.
The minister was of the view that building collapses are avoidable if strong institutional supervision of projects either publicly or privately owned are put in place.
He said that the FCT Administration would use the collapsed building in Gwarinpa, supervised by the Federal Housing Authority (FHA), to correct so many things in the industry in the Territory.
“I’m sure you know that that building in Gwarimpa was not supervised by any of our agencies. It was basically handled by the FHA under very lose corporate governance issues because I saw their preliminary report and as you all know, that builder was directed to stop work in March this year. Unfortunately, they continued and because of the weakness in the system nobody stopped him.”
The Minister said that the FCT Development Control Department will soon embark on post development audit of completed houses in Abuja to ascertain that what was earlier approved was not changed after ward.
Muhammad Bello said that the FCT Administration would also embark on registration of all Material Testing Laboratories operating in the FCT that are individually or corporately owned. It would also step-up surveillance of their facilities for effective control.
Professor Suleiman Karwai had promised to continue to partner with the FCTA in the areas of training, exchange expertise in civil engineering and other infrastructural development know how. [myad]
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