A 21-story building collapsed in Lagos on Monday, trapping an estimated 50 people in the rubble.
The building, on a construction site in the city's Ikoyi neighbourhood — known for its luxury apartments and opulent homes — came crashing down by a busy street. It is feared that passers-by have been buried in the collapse.
By Monday afternoon, only five survivors had been rescued, in a joint effort by the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency.
More than a dozen bodies have been recovered, as rescue operations continue. Families desperately searched for their loved ones, scrambling over the rubble and shouting names.
Gabriel Olakunle, a real estate facility manager, said he was lucky to have escaped the incident, having left the scene just minutes before the collapse.
“I learnt about the collapsed building 10 minutes after I had left the place for an inspection. I didn’t even know it was the building I inspected a few minutes after, until a colleague showed me an online video of the collapsed building,” he told The National.
“I spent less than 30 minutes at the site, I spoke to a few contract workers handling the building project and found out it's a building of 21 floors. I had anticipated that I would have to bring my clients here as soon as it was completed.”
It took ambulances, paramedics and other emergency responders more than two hours to get to the scene of the collapsed building.
Ibrahim Farinloye, an acting co-ordinator at NEMA, told local media that most of the emergency service responders came from the mainland — about 20 kilometres from the scene.
“When you talk of response time, the immediate people affected by the disaster become the first responders because they are the closest people. Their major responsibility is to give information and call for emergencies,” Mr Farinloye said.
“When you talk about ambulances and paramedics, the Dodan Military Barracks is very close here, they deploy their men to control the situation. And when we got here, we did an assessment of the situation and involved the appropriate agencies to come up with emergency services.”
Building collapses have become an increasingly common occurrence in Lagos, an emerging megacity of nearly 24 million people and a commercial hub in Sub-Saharan Africa, which is developing quickly, and chaotically.
Between 2005 and 2020, 152 buildings collapsed in the city, according to research by planning expert Dr Okunola Olasunkanmi.
You may get to the market with the intention of buying quality material but the strength of that material is not up to what the design engineer had in mind
Gerald Igboabuchi,
civil engineer
More than three quarters of those buildings were residential properties, many of them multistorey.
Lagos experienced one of its worst disasters in 2014, when a six-storey building collapsed during a service by Nigeria-based televangelist TB Joshua, killing 116 people.
Gerald Igboabuchi, a civil engineer, said a lot of basic standards in the construction of high rise buildings have been compromised by corruption.
“The use of substandard building materials and a combination of other problems are responsible for the large number of building collapses in Lagos. It happens frequently in Lagos because the soil load bearing capacity isn’t as good as it is in other cities outside Lagos. Disasters such as this also happen when you cut corners or there are defects in designs, or analysis of the building”, he said.
Mr Igboabuchi told The National that the use of substandard materials was a common problem.
“You may get to the market with the intention of buying quality material but the strength of that material is not up to what the design engineer had in mind", and it should be checked, he said.
The collapsed building was part of a complex called 360 Degree Towers, which was intended to house luxury apartments, town houses and penthouses, according to the development's website, which has since been taken offline.
The housing scheme was being developed by Fourscore Homes Limited, which claims to have a portfolio of projects in the UK, US, South Africa and other areas of Nigeria, with the lowest cost housing units available starting at $1.2 million.
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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The biog
Title: General Practitioner with a speciality in cardiology
Previous jobs: Worked in well-known hospitals Jaslok and Breach Candy in Mumbai, India
Education: Medical degree from the Government Medical College in Nagpur
How it all began: opened his first clinic in Ajman in 1993
Family: a 90-year-old mother, wife and two daughters
Remembers a time when medicines from India were purchased per kilo
