NINE persons have been rescued from a four-storey building that collapsed in the Life Camp Area of Abuja on Monday, July 3.
The building, under construction at the time of the collapse, had many workers trapped in it.
According to a report, there were about 20 people in the building, which was said to have an underground facility.
Officials of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Fire Service, National Emergency Management Authority (NEMA), among other response teams, were at the scene to conduct rescue operations.
Building collapse has become a recurring incident in the FCT.
On Wednesday, April 19, two persons died in a building collapse in the Wuse 2 area of the FCT.
On Thursday, February 2, a three-storey building, still under construction, collapsed in the Gwarimpa area of the FCT, killing three persons.
The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) subsequently revoked the allocation for the plot on which the building was being constructed.
Also, in 2022, at least two people died when a building housing a shopping mall collapsed in the Kubwa area of the FCT.
On Saturday, July 2, President of the Nigerian Institute of Building Yohana Izam said during an interview that under-regulation of the sector was a significant reason for the frequent cases of building collapse.
“The absence of baseline regulations such as the National Building Code is indeed a monumental scandal. The world over, the building industry is regulated by a set of consistent minimum standards for the siting, design, construction, and post-construction phases of a building.
“There must always be in existence virile physical planning laws to control development while building regulations, as in the UK or Codes as in the US, deal with key issues of standards,” Izam said.
He also identified the dearth of competent artisans in the industry as another contributory factor to the issue.
Ijeoma Opara is a journalist with The ICIR. Reach her via vopara@icirnigeria.org or @ije_le on Twitter.