Nigeria tallies the cost of building failures as forensic investigators take on collapse cases
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Nigeria lost at least N4.6 trillion in destroyed goods, property and business assets to building collapses and fires between 2022 and 2025, according to the Chartered Institute of Forensics and Certified Fraud Investigators of Nigeria.
Nigeria lost at least N4.6 trillion in destroyed goods, property and business assets to building collapses and fires between 2022 and 2025, an average of roughly N1.15 trillion a year, the Chartered Institute of Forensics and Certified Fraud Investigators of Nigeria (CIFCFIN) has said.
The institute's president and chairman of its governing council, Dr Iliyasu Gashinbaki, disclosed the estimate at the induction of the inaugural cohort of Certified Engineering Failure Forensic Investigation (CEFFI) professionals. He said a recent analysis of documented incidents over the four-year period pointed to losses on that scale across destroyed goods, property and business assets.
Gashinbaki cited a 2026 engineering study that identified 111 validated building-collapse incidents across Nigeria between 2015 and 2025, resulting in 321 deaths and 344 injuries - an average of about 32 deaths and 34 injuries a year within the dataset. Federal Government figures cited last month indicated that Nigeria has recorded more than 650 building collapses and over 1,600 deaths since 1974, with Lagos accounting for more than half of the recorded incidents.
The institute attributes the failures to substandard block-moulding and defective materials, unprofessional construction practices, inadequate supervision and attempts by developers to cut costs. The Standards Organisation of Nigeria, state ministries of works and local councils are among the bodies mandated to regulate building materials and enforce compliance, but recurring incidents have raised questions about how effective that monitoring has been.
CEFFI, set up by CIFCFIN with the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) and the Nigeria Building and Road Research Institute (NBRRI), is intended to bring engineering, forensic science, law, regulation and investigation together in the response to structural failures. "Where there is suspected negligence, fraud, malpractice or deliberate compromise of safety, properly conducted forensic engineering can preserve the technical evidence required," Gashinbaki said.
The push comes amid continuing incidents. Daily Trust reported that one person was injured after a five-storey building under construction partially collapsed on Durban Street in Wuse II, Abuja.