Can Nigerians build their homes with anything other than cement? This article attempts to furnish an answer to that question.
The truth is that wood is used in the core of buildings everywhere. In the Nigerian environment, it is almost exclusively used only for makeshift structures that were hastily assembled. Also, as part of the frames of buildings, never the skeletal structure.
Although wood has certain benefits when used in the construction of buildings, it has certain disadvantages in the Nigerian Real Estate context that make it nearly impossible for a Nigerian to construct a durable structure with it.
In modern history, when Western-styled engineering arrived in Africa, wood was used in buildings such as:
- Homes
- Bridges
- Stalls
But after that era, Africans mostly transitioned to the use of cement for durable structures, and it doesn’t seem like that will change anytime soon.
Note that to build the concrete skeleton of the building, we don’t use cement alone, we make concrete pillars by combining cement with Sand and Iron.
Check Wikipedia on Nigerian traditional architecture.
Why We Build Using Cement Instead of Wood
1. Risk of Pest Infestation
Wood is susceptible to pest infestation, whereas cement is not. Especially in the deep tropical regions, Nigeria’s environment is plagued by the presence of pests like termites and ants. Every article of wood used in any part of the building in tropical areas.
2. Cost of Maintenance
Wood is more expensive to maintain than cement. Once you erect a structure with concrete, made of cement, you can be sure that they are there, and you would need little to no additional maintenance investment.
3. Warping
This happens when wood shrinks, swells, or twists due to age, environmental humidity, and temperature changes. It results in reduced functionality of areas of the wooden structure that require accurate calculations. This is not noticed with concrete, as it hardly expands noticeably.
4. Risk of combustion
Wood burns, simply. And cement does not. So, when we use wood in our homes, even wooden and window frames, we are careful with fire. In more recent times, Nigerians have begun to reduce the percentage of wood used in buildings, replacing it with more steel and embellishing cement.
That said,…
Nigerians do build with wood, but only in very few uses. But the type of wood used is not in abundant supply locally and would always come in very costly. It feeds into the aspect of cost.
To buy property in Nigeria, check our property page.
