A yet to be authenticated withdrawal letter, allegedly belonging to the structural supervisor of the collapsed 21-storey building under construction in Ikoyi has emerged.
In the letter dated February 20, 2020, the managing director of Prowess Engineering Limited, Muritala Olawale, complained that the action to withdrawal of service became necessary as the client seemed to have derailed from the original plan.
“This letter is to formally inform you of our structural consultancy service from the above named project. We arrived at this decision due to the fact that we no longer share same vision with you as the client in terms of how the project is being executed,” Olawale wrote.
Being three building under construction, the Prowess Engineering boss stated that his company could only guarantee the integrity of only two of the building.
“We can guarantee the integrity of the first two buildings and also works done up to the fourth floor of the third building supervised by us provided the specifications have been met in terms of the required concrete strength.
“This we do not have control over as we do not have concrete cube test results for each stage of the building till date. Also, kindly note that we are not taking responsibilities for any other construction errors that may have occurred over time on the project.”
Olawale also requested that his company’s name and identifications should be erased from the project board.
Some experts believed collusion between government officials and the client, non-compliance and greed could have been responsible for the fate that befall the project, putting several lives in danger.
“This is what you get when government official would not do the needful to ascertain the veracity of documentation presented them for building approvals simply because of bribe money presented them under the table, business guys are always willing to cheat, material sellers would compromise quality for quantities, contractors would cut Corners by reducing materials supplied them by taking part of it to the open markets to be sold. Then the recipient of all this evil thereby becomes the ordinary man who has truthfully Labored all his life to pay for the bogus high rents. At the end, he would just die and his body may never be recovered from the rubble. It would make news for few days and after that, it becomes a non-issue and the system would wait and do nothing until another incident occurs. We are just a society simply and barely existing but not leaving life. God help Nigerians,” an anonymous wrote.
“One of the reasons there should be collaboration among professionals. You don’t take over a project from a colleague without asking questions.just because you are hungry. It is very difficult sometimes to stand some of these clients and particularly colleagues that are not in active practice.”
As Nigerians await the outcome of the investigation that would definitely follow the incident, another expert chipped in.
“On a second thought too, curing process per stage might not be met before loading the structure. Especially when your props are not adequate to support the imposed loads. We shall wait,” he said.
Olawale Olaleye wondered why Nigerians allow corruption to cheaply take the lives of innocent men on the street looking for food legally.
“I just saw a video of people dead in the rubble, being cut out of the construction irons. Heartbreaking! How do you leave your house in search of what to consume and you ended up being consumed, because someone tried to cut corners?” he wrote.
Hours ago, Nigerian media space was filled with the news of a 21-storey building that was under construction on Gerald Road, Ikoyi, Lagos coming all the way down as number of casualties continues to pile.
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