Bennett Oghifo
The Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) and Nigeria Building and Road Research Institute (NBRRI) are partnering with the Chartered Institute of Forensics and Certified Fraud Investigators of Nigeria (CIFCFIN) to tackle the menace of engineering failure in the country.
Speaking in Abuja on Wednesday during the induction of the inaugural cohort of Certified Forensic Engineering Failure Investigators (CEFFI), the President and Chairman, Governing Council of CIFCIN, Dr. Iliyasu Gashinbaki said that when engineering fails, the consequences do not end with the failure of a structure, machine or project. “They can become a failure of lives, public resources, safety and institutional trust. Such failures may arise from defective design, substandard materials, negligent workmanship, inadequate supervision or compromised safety standards. What appears to be technical failure may have deeper roots in fraud, procurement abuse, falsification, conflict of interest or deliberate circumvention of engineering controls.”
Reeling out statistics to buttress his point, he said the scale of the challenge is huge. “A 2026 engineering study identified 111 validated building-collapse in Nigeria between 2015 and 2025, resulting in 321 deaths and 344 injuries, an average of approximately 32 deaths and 34 injuries every yearwithin that dataset. Fire-related losses are equally sobering: a recent analysis of documented incidents between 2022 and 2025 estimated at least ₦4.6 trillion in destroyed goods, property and business assets, equivalent to roughly ₦1.15 trillion annually across that dataset. The verified evidence is already sufficiently grave: the economic and human cost of engineering and infrastructure failure is too substantial for Nigeria to rely on reactive investigation.”
He therefore said the partnership with COREN and NIBRRI could not have come at a better time – “amultidisciplinary intersection of engineering, forensic science, law,regulation and investigation which makes the certification necessary at this stage of our national development”
He charged regulators, project owners, contractors, professional bodies and law-enforcement agencies to end the era in which engineering failure ends with repairs, abandonment or silence and make way to an era of evidence-based accountability. “Where there is suspected negligence, fraud, malpractice or deliberate compromise of safety, properly conducted forensic engineering can preserve the technical evidence required to support regulatory and lawful enforcement processes. Today, therefore, we lay the foundation for a professional union of engineering, forensics, regulation and law enforcement; a union whose far-reaching consequence should be safer infrastructure, stronger institutions, better stewardship of public resources and ultimately the protection of human life.”
In his remarks, COREN President, Engr. Prof. Sadiq Zubair Abubakar said the collaboration with CIFCFIN was designed to equip engineers with dual competencies that combine engineering expertise with forensic investigation skills.
Describing the development as a significant milestone for Nigeria’s engineering profession, he said the initiative was aimed at addressing longstanding gaps in the investigation of engineering failures, particularly in the country’s construction and built environment.
He called for the development of a critical mass of professionally trained forensic engineering investigators to strengthen the investigation of infrastructure failures across the country.
He said the application of forensic engineering investigation should not be limited to the construction sector, but should extend to other critical areas of the Nigerian economy: “Mining, oil and gas, telecommunications, transportation, aviation and aerospace sectors all present opportunities where certified engineering failure forensic investigators could play important roles.”
He said the ultimate objective was to develop internationally recognised engineering forensic professionals who would be able to operate both within Nigeria and globally. He expressed hope that the partnership would deepen and expand, describing the training as an important step towards strengthening engineering regulation and professional capacity in Nigeria.
CIFCFIN was established under the Chartered Institute of Forensics and Certified Fraud Investigators of Nigeria (Establishment) Act, 2022, with a mandate encompassing professional training, supervision and regulation of multidisciplinary forensic and fraud-investigation practice.