The Council of Registered Engineers of Nigeria has said the guest house of the Synagogue Church of All Nations that collapsed on September 12, 2014 had an undersized foundation.
The position of COREN was contained in a report it submitted to the coroners inquest probing the collapse of the building in which 116 persons died.
The majority of those that died were South Africans.
Testifying at the inquest, Victor Oyenuga, a witness from the Council for the Regulation of Engineers of Nigeria, said investigations were carried out to unravel the cause of the collapse.
Oyenuga said the outcomes of the investigations were detailed in a 30-page technical report jointly prepared by COREN and the Nigerian Building and Road Research Institute.
He said: “From our investigations, we discovered that the foundation of the building was undersized.
“The columns were not strong enough to carry the weight of the building and the designs were not proper for such a structure.
“To my own knowledge, whoever designed that building is not a structural engineer.
“If a structural engineer handled this project, the way the reinforcement was designed would have been different.”
Oyenuga, therefore, appealed to the court to make a recommendation that buildings should be designed by structural engineers in order to forestall such occurrence in future.
NAN reports that the matter was adjourned till March 13 for further hearing.
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