The spate of building collapse in Nigeria has been steadily increasing over the past few years, drawing concerns from the government and other stakeholders.
Several factors have been fingered as the causes of building collapse in Nigeria, chiefly the use of substandard building materials, the deployment of unsafe but cost-cutting techniques in housing construction and the lack of professional supervision at various levels of the construction process.
In addition to the established causes of building collapse, data from developed countries show that many of the recorded cases in these climes are due to the fact that the current codes of practice do not make provisions for unexpected loads and an unexpected failure of a single member may lead to an all-round collapse of the entire structure.