The Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria and Nigeria Building and Road Research Institute are partnering with the Chartered Institute of Forensics and Certified Fraud Investigators of Nigeria to tackle the menace of engineering failure in the country.
Speaking in Abuja during the induction of the inaugural cohort of the Certified Forensic Engineering Failure Investigators, 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, according to a statement from the partners.
“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.”
Giving details to buttress his point, he said the scale of the challenge was huge. According to him, a 2026 engineering study identified 111 validated building collapses in Nigeria between 2015 and 2025, resulting in 321 deaths and 344 injuries, an average of approximately 32 deaths and 34 injuries every year within that dataset.
Gashinbaki stressed that fire-related losses were equally sobering, saying, “A recent analysis of documented incidents between 2022 and 2025 estimated at least N4.6tn in destroyed goods, property and business assets, equivalent to roughly N1.15tn annually across that dataset.”
He highlighted that the verified evidence was already sufficiently grave, adding that the economic and human cost of engineering and infrastructure failure was 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. “A multidisciplinary intersection of engineering, forensic science, law, regulation and investigation which makes the certification necessary at this stage of our national development,” he said.
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 for an era of evidence-based accountability.
Gashinbaki maintained that where there was suspected negligence, fraud, malpractice or deliberate compromise of safety, properly conducted forensic engineering could 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,” he added.
In his remarks, COREN President, Prof. Sadiq 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.
Abubakar 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,” Abubakar said.
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.
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