‘Implementation of building industry laws will phase out quacks’

Adenike Said, chairman, Nigeria Institute of Builders, Lagos state chapter, says that building laws must be implemented to phase out quacks in the building industry.

Said made this statement at the Lafarge building community dialogue series, which was held in collaboration with the NIB, Lagos chapter.

“This is the first interaction between Lafarge and NIOB. In construction, the missing link is an interaction between the builders and other stakeholders. We deal with clients all the time, we can sell their ideas to the end users. This way, we can avoid building collapse and also pass this down to the artisans working on site,” she said.

“These days, everybody is doing construction their own way, they don’t believe that they need professionals yet they are not getting value for their money. We have quacks here and there in the industry.

“In the last 20 years, we have experienced a lot of building collapses and people are not getting value for their money. There are various laws in the building industry, what we need is implementation so that we phase out all the quacks and the old way of doing things.”

Vipul Agrawal, marketing director, Lafarge Africa Plc, said the company is trying to establish itself as more than a cement supplier in the industry.

“When building, good materials and intentions are not enough, that is why we want to show that at Lafarge, we are going beyond supplying cement. We are talking about Easy Home partner.

“It means that we help you with your building plans, we link you with microfinance and mortgage partners, we help you get the right building materials, we mnake sure you have the right builders because you can have good materials and your builder doesn’t know how to build which is the case most of the time and everything is useless.

“The services are available to every Nigerian. To access it, you come to us and tell us what you want and we provide you the service but you have to use our cement. We will link you up with a microfinance bank and our construction partner so it’s a win win for everybody.

“It’s not about how rich you are. Our product is part of our offer and we want to be seen as more than a supplier of Elephant cement.”