Nigeria Promises To Implement Integrity Test On Major Bridges, Buildings

The Nigerian government has promised to begin partnerships with other stakeholders and relevant professional bodies, particularly in engineering, for the integrity testing of all major bridges and buildings across the country.

The Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, Uche Nnaji said this when he went on a facility tour of the Nigerian Building and Road Research Institute in Abuja Nigeria’s capital.

Nnaji said the Integrity test on Bridges and Buildings which is a major aspect of the NBRRI Bill is an important measure that will drastically curtail the menace of building collapse in the future.

He said; “The collapse of buildings and bridges is not merely a matter of structural failure; it is a grave social, economic, and safety concern that demands our immediate and unwavering attention. Accordingly, we shall soon reach out to and partner with other stakeholders and relevant professional bodies, particularly in engineering, for the integrity testing of all major bridges and buildings across the country.”

The Minister further promised to assist the agency in getting the needed approval to meet the gap in staff strength by recruiting highly skilled research officers to drive the Institute.

“I also learned of NBRRI’s challenges regarding the Institute’s Mandate, I am pleased to use my good office and every other means available to me to push for Mr. President’s assent to the NBRRI Bill to enable its full use,” he said.

While commending the management of the Institute for their efforts towards repositioning NBRRI, Nnaji promised to address the issue of poor funding by engaging the necessary authorities to improve available funding levels.

The Director General of Nigerian Building and Road Research Institute NBRR, Prof Samson Duna said NBRRI has always been at the sight of every building collapse in Nigeria and has gathered the major reasons for building collapse which he explained to be mostly man-made errors.

Professor Duna said; “Starting from design, lack of geotechnical investigation, lack of technical know-how, lack of quality construction material, lack of proper manpower to do it are some of the factors we were able to determine that has to do with building collapse. The approval is done by the state development board and the state development board is under the state government. When a building collapses, people start blaming the federal government as they don’t have a hand in it, all approvals are done at the state level or FCT level.”

Stating that the agency has several innovations on the ground, the DG called on the investors to come up and partner with the agency to take the products to the market.

He said; “The Pozzolana is a breakthrough as far as knowledge is concerned. This Pozzolana is like a substitute that supplements cement in cement products. The cost of cement continues to increase. If we will have an alternative to cement, I’m telling you the price of cement will go down. What NBRRI has come up with for this Pozzolana, is to produce this product from waste and this waste goes through a process, and this process is presently using local content and it is produced from waste, and it is cost-effective as far as production is concerned. And the good thing is that after that product, we were able to use it to construct infrastructure with it,” he said.

Prof Duna stated that one of the major challenges of the agency is land space, and appealed to the government for a bigger land space for the agency to create a technology village where research results can be demonstrated in the field.

Mercy Chukwudiebere