Building Collapse: Gwarimpa Residents Seek End to Commercialisation of 6th Avenue
Olawale Ajimotokan in Abuja
The Residents Association of Adkan Estate, Gwarimpa, Abuja have urged the authority to facilitate the suspension of the development of commercial buildings on 6th Avenue after the recent incident of a collapsed three-storey shopping complex in the area where three persons were killed.
The Chairman of Adkan Estate Residents Association, Kabir Akanbi made the appeal when he briefed the media over the weekend.
He said the collapse of the commercial building under construction on 6th Avenue in Gwarinpa, represented the culmination of the continuing trend of illegally converting buildings and green areas purposely designed as residences and public utilities for commercial purposes.
“We are seizing this occasion to demand that all commercial buildings under construction along 6th Avenue be stopped forthwith. As there is an urgent need to conduct structural integrity tests on the existing buildings to forestall a similar catastrophe. Like the saying goes, a stitch in time saves nine. We must be more compliant with the building regulations and as we have seen, the costs of deviance far outweigh that of compliance, if compliance has any downsides at all,” Akanbi said.
The residents also decried the recent increase of commercial buildings in the neigbourhood contrary to the original design as set in the Abuja Model City II plan when Adkan Estate was first conceived.
“We have equally been grappling with the numerous costs of these forced conversions such as the traffic logjams we now experience on a daily basis, the increase in insecurity, which naturally follows commercialisation as criminals, suddenly see opportunities for nefarious acts,” he said.
He described the building collapse as the ugly and extreme manifestation of the ravenous appetite for commercialisation that has taken hold within the estate in recent years without regard for legal boundaries and peaceable habitation.
Residents of Adkan Estate urged a return to the original design as set in the Abuja Model City II plan when the estate was first conceived and asked the authority to stop congesting and distorting the estate in the name of pecuniary gains as well as protect the lives of the residents from the risk of monetary benefit.
