JOS – The Nigerian Building and Road Research Institute (NBRRI), says it is working with stakeholders to reduce the price of building materials so as to facilitate easy ownership of houses.
Mr Tyosor Terver, NBRRI’s Coordinator in North Central Zone, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), in Jos on Monday that the focus was to ease the housing problem facing many Nigerians, especially the urban dwellers.
.“Nigeria has a housing deficit of 17 million and therefore requires the engagement of more stakeholders to make housing affordable to the public.
He added that NBRRI’s mandate was to conduct integrated researches toward alternative and affordable building technologies.
Terver said that NBRRI had produced an interlocking bricklaying machine for producing blocks, using 95 per cent laterite and only five per cent cement.
He pointed out that laterite was abundant, especially in the northern region, and explained that using it had reduced the cost of construction by 35 per cent.
The coodinator said the blocks produced by the machine regulated temperature and had also proved to be bullet proof.
He added that NBRRI was also serving as a technology transfer centre where innovations of the institute were taken to grassroots through training of artisans on such skills.
According to him, NBRRI has also identified research needs, stressing that in spite of the abundance of granite in Plateau, a requirement in most construction, the method of processing had made it expensive.
“Apart from the use of heavy machinery in its processing, the local production, which is crude, is usually done by women’’, he added.
He observed that such women were not only susceptible to hazards, but that the granites were not evenly broken which could make construction more time consuming.
Terver said that a machine already designed to improve the quality of the production would soon be fabricated and test ran in the NBRRI laboratory at Ota, Ogun. (NAN)