Prof. Danladi Matawal, the Director-General of Nigerian Building and Road Research Institute, has called for parallel Research and Development funds for researches on road and bridge construction in Nigeria.
Matawal made the call in his analysis of the bridge collapse in Italy.
The analysis, entitled: “Italian Genoa Bridge Collapse: Any Lessons for Nigeria,” was made available to the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja on Thursday.
The Genoa bridge carries 70,000 passengers everyday and more than 30 vehicles were on it when it collapsed and 38 lives were confirmed lost in the accident.
Matawal said news of the collapsed bridge in Genoa, Italy should serve as lessons for Nigeria, cognate Nigerian engineers and policy makers.
He said: “My preliminary conclusion is that even Italy with such history of magnificent bridge and road building achievements and pride has been badly hit by the Genoa collapse and its pride bruised.
“Can we say that anyone is paying attention to our bridges in Nigeria for maintenance and remediation?
“Huge sums being committed to roads are primarily for resurfacing only and not certain if anyone believes the bridges also need attention.
“Let us not forget the very immediate past experiences that we had on building collapse that warranted a fairly energetic R&D intervention by NBRRI to reduce to a bare minimum over the years this ugly occurrences.
“There is the need to allocate parallel R&D funds to NBRRI as roads and bridges are constructed.
“Example, when ‘SUKUK’ funds were raised and spread on roads rehabilitation in the country, did we think that the premier cognate Research Institute (NBRRI) in the country would need some small percentage of the 100 billion dollars to continue to support with sustainable solutions?”
Matawal said that the Italian Genoa Morrandi bridge collapse posed serious questions to Nigerian engineering technical and policy makers, stressing that “we cannot sit and fold our arms”, adding: “The Italian government has declared a 12-month emergency after this collapse and declared that in modern society with so much technological prowess, these types of catastrophes cannot be allowed to occur.
“Can Nigeria take a queue and empower NBRRI to help out on its bridge R&D initiative? Surely attention is desired.”
Highlighting the lesson on the collapsed bridge, Matawal said it was a cable bridge owned by government but privately operated.
He said the first lesson was that the concession of the bridge, from preliminary news, included maintenance from generated income.
“There were planned foundation, cable and superstructural repairs when it collapsed.
“Lesson number two is that bridge collapse being a very rare occurrence was least expected in Italy but this bridge had warnings from experts.
“The private operating company has been blamed by the Italian Minister of Transport and their top management staff asked to resign.
“Lesson number three is that response was rapid, rescue is still on-going.”
He noted that while investigation was still ongoing, the government instantly provided $5 million (N1.8 billion) as rescue and operations fund.
Matawal said although bridge collapse was very rare, the experience in Nigeria was different, citing the cases of smaller bridges and culverts in Kontagora and Mokwa areas of Niger State in 2017 and 2018.
He noted that while Nigerians had looked at the pictures of collapsed bridges, they were unconcerned about long term sustainable solutions as long as alternative routes were provided.
He said: “Example, NBRRI sent a team to the sites in Mokwa area in 2017 and there is a definite report and opinion but who cares?
“After it occurred again in 2018 and NBRRI raised a team to visit again, this time with some FERMA engineers, but funding has held the team back and they will ultimately be there anyway.
“Now these are small bridges and even culverts whose failure has not been unexpected.
“Because they were hydraulically underdesigned and the floods simply overwhelmed them.”
Matawal said the creation of new channels “led to the collapse of existing structures by eroding away the soils on the sides and beneath toes of these bridges.
“All these hydraulic structures should have been lifted higher above the flood plains by more extensive embankments and the water openings designed and constructed to be of higher capacity.”
Matawal said the Italian Genoa experience manifested structural challenges and asked: “Can Nigerian bridges be exempted from suspicion in structural integrity suspicions?”
He said in 2016, following some public outcry, NBRRI Bridge Research team visited a certain Tamburawa bridge near Kano State.
He said: “A Technical report of what was discovered was released and in 2017, the Federal Ministry of Works (and Power) awarded contract for the remediation of Tamburawa bridge (for about N1.5 billion.
“NBRRI got the impression that other bridges needed to be studied and it is not easy to go beneath a bridge deck but NBRRI has currently completed field work on all bridges from Abuja – Kaduna – Kano using drone inspections and a report is being processed.
“It is revealing because it was not only Tamburawa bridge alone that had its piles extensively exposed representing structural risk of a very high severity rating.
“But literally all bridges on this route have now been identified to be in the same state as Tamburawa.”
Matawal added that there was severe cracking on most of the substructural and superstructural elements of the bridges, the bearings displaced or malaligned, beams distressed, etc.
He added: “The logical thing is for NBRRI to immediately dispatch different teams to all routes in the country. Indeed, the programme has already been mapped out but there are serious funding and personnel shortages.
“Experience gained needs to be taught to other teams to perform, more field vehicles and drones are needed and maybe a central coordinating unit directing studies and analysing measurements taken from the field set up in the headquarters in Abuja.”
NAN.
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