Why New Building Technics Are Not Prevalent in Nigeria’

In Nigeria, the use of glass and steel and clay bricks is trending in most locations including rural and urban centres especially towards the luxury end of the housing market.

For instance, the prefabricated building construction involves the practice of assembling a variety of components of a structure at a manufacturing site and transporting those sub-assemblies to the location of the construction jobsite. It is a mass produced mode of construction and takes less than half the time when compared to traditional construction

The technic is becoming the norm, improving in quality of building, sidesteps the possibility of unreliable contractor, unproductive staff and has become available with numerous benefits which also include; eco-friendly, energy efficiency, shorter construction time and sustainable construction. Whereas, in existing traditional construction methods require extra materials that lead to increased waste.

In the case of container homes, they are made from the steel shipping containers that carry goods on trains, trucks, and ships. The smallest container makes a tiny box of a home at about 100 square feet of floor space. Experts say homes are built with containers because they are seen as more eco-friendly than traditional building materials such like bricks and cement. Tempo-housing, Nigerian housing interior and exterior firm has leveraged on this technology and expertise to create a Nigerian tailored solutions to the housing problem that is quick to build, easy to maintain, portable and most importantly affordable.

Speaking on the development, the Managing Director of Tetramanor, a Lagos-based building Development Company, John Beecroft told The Guardian that the two technics very common at the moment are the use of glass and steel.

“In most of the buildings around, you see a lot of usage of glass and steel. This is more common in expensive locations like, Lekki, Ikoyi, Banana Island and Victoria Island in Lagos. Glass and steel are very expensive materials to build home. The use of glass and steel give you very beautiful buildings.”

According to him, Nigerians are also adopting the uses of clay bricks in building their homes as the practice provides low cost maintenance in building.

“Clay bricks are actually very expensive to build, however, now that they are been mass-produced, they have become cheaper. People are beginning to use them. The unique thing about clay bricks is that maintenance is lower. Once you fixed it, there are no needs to paint every year like the normal blockhouse nor plaster it or clean it. Of course, it has its own challenges too like you canít put the piping/wiring inside clay bricks rather everything must be exposed. Building cracks is limited also in the use of clay bricks. Developers in the country have been adopting this technology en masse.”

For him, developers in Nigeria are looking forward to the adoption of prefabricated buildings where the technology involves construction of buildings in the factory for onward assembly at the building site, only if there are enough funds to import the technics to the country.

“This technology is common in the United States of America (USA) and other countries because it is much cheaper and more used for mass housing. The technology is in the form of mole wall build and everything including the roofing done in the factory, only to be installed on the site. Nigeria doesnít have the technology. Until Nigeria makes use of prefabricated building, solving the problem of affordable housing will remain a challenge. The buildings are lighter in weight, tested and are certified to be durable.

“In the US, developers are using woods to build so that if the wood collapsed on the occupants, he or she could still survive whereas if a block house collapse on occupants, survival rate is not visible. We need to find the cost of importing this technology to Nigeria to solve the challenge of mass housing,” he said.

On container housing, he emphasized that some developers have claimed that the technology could be used for a two-bedroom/three room apartment as low as N6 million and the container housing can be arranged up to three or four storeys high. According to him, experts have attested that it could reduce the cost of the normal house down by 60 per cent reduction, which is very affordable.

He said; “We know that two or more developers are trying to bring it onboard but we are watching to see whether its something that we could explore. Most of the oil companies use them off-site for accommodation. The containers that are lying in waste in shipping houses could be converted for that purpose. We need the technology to be imported, the skill for workers and the buyers to have confidence in the technology. We must produce it in Nigeria, workers and those who will adopt it.

The Second Vice President of Nigerian Institute of Building (NIOB), Kunle Awobodu said new technics in building construction have made rendering, laying of blocks and plastering in building to be very easy to achieve at a faster rate.

“Some new machines that molds blocks at high speed are now available in the market. 3D printings are now used for making the mechanical components of building prototypes. The process is been introduced to construction to encourage mass construction. We also have construction robots that could do a lot of activities within the construction industry like erection of steels and lying of bricks but our fear is that when you start to engage the use of robots, it might lead to unemployment for the building artisans.”