The Edo State Government has launched a digital platform to track building projects and assess the safety of government-owned structures, a move that speaks directly to one of Nigeria’s most persistent public safety failures. The platform, EdoBuild360, was unveiled in Benin City on Wednesday and is built to keep digital records of buildings and follow construction from planning through to completion.
Presenting it at the launch, the Special Adviser to Governor Monday Okpebholo on Building Projects Monitoring and Implementation, Irene Ojo, said her office developed the system with the Edo State Health Insurance Company, the Edo State Development and Building Control Agency and the Edo State Public Buildings and Maintenance Agency. She said the platform carries condition surveys that trained inspectors can use to record the true state of a building, and would allow Edo citizens in the diaspora to assess properties they intend to buy.
Ojo said the idea grew out of a needs assessment she carried out after resuming office, which exposed gaps in safety across the building sector. Visits to construction sites in the state’s three senatorial districts, she said, showed workers operating without protective equipment, even though such gear is provided for in the contracts the state awards. Her office is now in talks with the state health insurance company on cover for construction workers injured on the job.
The timing matters, because building collapse remains one of Nigeria’s deadliest and most avoidable hazards. The Building Collapse Prevention Guild, a body of built environment professionals, puts the toll at more than 650 collapses and over 1,600 deaths since the first recorded case in Oyo State in 1974, which killed 27 people. The year 2022 alone accounted for 62 incidents, the worst on record, while 47 collapses were logged across 14 states in 2024.
The human cost has not eased. A forensic engineering study presented in Abuja this year validated 111 collapse incidents between 2015 and 2025, with 321 deaths and 344 injuries. The Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Ahmed Dangiwa, has described the frequency of these failures as a national embarrassment. Lagos carries the heaviest burden, accounting for more than half of all recorded cases, but no state is immune.
Edo’s own exposure is considerable. The immediate past governor, Godwin Obaseki, once stated that more than 90 per cent of structures in the state were put up without an approved building plan, a gap that leaves regulators with little record of what has been built or how. The state’s building control agency has since demolished hundreds of illegal structures in Benin City, but enforcement alone has struggled to close the gap.
EdoBuild360 places the state within a wider shift towards digital oversight of construction. Lagos has automated its building permits through an electronic planning system, while Ebonyi has rolled out statewide inspections, each trying to replace paper trails and guesswork with verifiable records. For Edo, the promise is a single database showing how many buildings exist, their condition, and whether public projects are being delivered as designed.
Representing the Head of Service, Anthony Okungbowa, at the event, Dr Peter Osagie said safety needed to become a culture rather than a box to tick. The launch comes against the backdrop of the building and infrastructure projects Okpebholo has pursued since taking office in November 2024, which the government says the platform will help monitor.
The real test will be whether the platform moves beyond record keeping to enforcement. Nigeria does not lack building codes or agencies; what has repeatedly failed is monitoring, investigation and accountability after a collapse. Whether EdoBuild360 can change that will depend on how consistently its inspections are carried out and acted upon, and on whether the data it gathers is used to hold contractors and officials to the standards already on the books.