Voice of Emancipation: Would We Learn Anything

By Kayode Emola

It is nearly two weeks since the collapse of the 21-storey high rise building in Gerrard Street, Lekki; a tragedy that took the lives of many people including Mr Femi Osibona, the owner, as well as his friends, colleagues and associates.

Whilst many have posited ideas of why the building should have collapsed, my fear is that we may never learn the truth, and so the lessons from this and future events will be lost, rather than learnt. I will elaborate further into my thoughts on this.

To begin, this is not the first high rise building in the world to have collapsed. However, as a society we are at risk of focusing so much on the blame game that we lose sight of the real issues. We must therefore guard against this by ensuring that we manage the aftermath properly. For a building of such nature to have collapsed, there will be many factors that may have contributed to it, and it behoves us to dissect them systematically.

Firstly, we know that Lagos is a highly crowded city, with a present population that far outstrips the resources and space available. At the beginning of the 20th century, Lagos was home to fewer than 150,000 people. As of today, its populace runs to over more than 30 million people. This, by any measure, makes it one of the most densely populated areas of the world relative to its landmass. It is also blighted by inadequate administration and regulation, where those bequeathed with the authority of oversight are either too blind to see how to act correctly, or too corrupt to do their job properly.

In comparison, London, in the UK, once suffered a similar fate to the Ikoyi building when Ronan Point collapsed on 16 May 1968. The 22-storey tower block in Newham fell just two months after it had opened, killing four people and injuring 17 others. The collapse was caused by a gas explosion that destroyed some load-bearing walls, resulting in an entire corner of the building giving way. When the building collapsed, a formal inquiry was conducted to investigate the root cause of the problem and to ensure lessons were learnt for the future.

This investigation found that the immediate cause of the collapse of Ronan Point was poor design and construction. In response to this, major changes were introduced in the UK building regulations. The Griffiths inquiry found that the building was not adequate to withstand even small explosions. It also deemed the construction inadequate for the expected wind loading, since the wind speeds that the regulations required consideration of were much too low for a building of this height. Finally, the inquiry discovered that the building was not adequately equipped for the eventuality of a fire, as any fire outbreak, even on a minor scale, would have caused the entire building to succumb.

Even though Ronan Point was partly rebuilt, I doubt that we will see the same in the case of 360 degrees, considering the amount of damage that was done and also that the owner was killed in the rubble. My fear is that, after all has been said and done, we will carry on with our daily activities, thinking no more about Gerrard Street until another disaster strike. I am ashamed to say that this has consistently been our attitude in Nigeria up till today; an attitude which has seen our country, despite possessing such great potential, suffer only setbacks because we lack a will to live above the ordinary.

I like the zeal of late Mr Femi Osibona, aka Fourscore, in daring to do the unimaginable. I am therefore saddened that we, as a people, may never learn from the unfortunate events of 1st November 2021 that claimed his life. A brief research into the situation informed me that there have been over 150 buildings collapse since 2005 in Lagos State alone. Yet in spite of this, no lessons seem to have been learnt and we continue to live on the edge. The problems we encounter as a people stem from the fact that we fail to challenge those in authority when they do wrong, which has been a continual plague on us as a society.

With our “I don’t care” attitude currently eroding the fabric of every aspect of our society, the onus is on us as a people to remould our lives – and those of our children – in order to shape a better future. Whilst a lot of people still hold to the belief it will take the collective will of every Nigerian working hard to generate that destiny that we all desire, I believe this is a great illusion. If we look at the design and construction of Nigeria, we will discover parallels between the causes of the collapse of Ronan Point and significant issues in our own country.

When Nigeria was first designed and constructed in 1914, there was nothing more concrete holding this nation together than the business interest of the British empire. In the 1940’s, as the British empire began to disintegrate and many African countries sought independence, a small group of Nigerians, drafted from the major ethnic lines, negotiated a form of structure that could see a greater integration. The problem with this arrangement was that many indigenous peoples, regarded as minority groups, were excluded from consideration, a situation that still stands today. This allowed scope for greater manipulation by the British government.

Nigeria is now at a point where, whether we like it or not, every segment of the country will have to undertake a critical reflection of how to move forward. The arrangements, both current and previous, were never designed or constructed to be able to stand the test of time. They have been built on a foundation of lies and deceit, calculated to look good on the outside, but possessing major defects on the inside such that even a minor mishap would cause the whole wall to collapse like a pack of cards.

I thus implore the advocates of Yoruba Nation to continue in their unflagging efforts to move away from this destructive edifice called Nigeria towards a nation where we can build something meaningful for ourselves. A nation where we will have the opportunity to design and construct, founded on our own culture and strong traditions of mutual respect for the rule of law. A nation where everyone has equal opportunity to grow even beyond their own potential, to the betterment of society as a whole. We hold fast to the hope that the Yoruba Nation of our dreams today will become reality in the imminent future. Until then, continue to stand up, speak out and together we will make the world hear us.