Mr Dickson says the agency does not have enough manpower to carry out most of its duties
In a rare interview with PREMIUM TIMES, the Director General of the Lagos State Safety Commission, Hakeem Dickson, speaks about his work at the commission, the several incidents of building collapse in Lagos, and his alleged conviction for fraud in the U.S.
When I saw this appointment, so, I am like I have always been a contractor, so there is an opportunity to come back political, so, let me just take this job. My wife and I sat together and we agreed that, you know what, we can go to America any other time. So, this is like another step. I was a local government chairman, I was a special adviser to Senator Ogunlewe when he was in the Ministry of Works, you know, going back and forth to Abuja, the presidency, Obasanjo then.
So our plan is to reduce numbers of injury, ill health, and be in a very good condition, sitting down properly in the office not like this all the time. See, anything that has to do with the economics these are one of the things that we are doing. Our target is to reduce the accident rate to a minimum.
There was no safety commission when the buildings in Lagos Island are being given to developers. The families didn’t have money, so they looked for who had small money and had no single knowledge on how to build. Even without an approval from Physical Planning or, if they did have, they were not building to specification. I don’t want to blame the Ministry of Physical Planning for what happened? How did it get there? But the building is already there.
There is a convention that is coming up in England on the 17th or 18th of this month but because of the change of government that is why I’m not going because I will have been there. They told us, high rise starts from the fifth floor and some people are still arguing high rise starts from the sixth floor. My point is, high rise starts from when you can be able to use the lift, which means after the fourth floor, there should be a lift.
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