Potentials and Viabilities of Abandoned Public Buildings in Nigeria

Abstract

Public buildings are builtwith substantial amount of money. Incessant abandonment of these facilities undoubtedly comes with negative impacts. The most significant of such buildings is the Old Federal Secretariat located in Ikoyi, Lagos. The aim of this study is to examine the potentials and viabilities of abandoned government buildings using the said facility. The study adopts a combination of literature review, site visitation and quantitative approach using Linkert scale structured questionnaire. Study samples were drawn from the residents of the environment. A total of 300 questionnaires were administered using systematic random sampling technique in selecting study respondents. Findings shows that there is a decrease in the tempo of economic activities, increase in vandalism and crime rate, devaluation impact on adjoining properties; increase in incidence of blight environment and menace to the environment aesthetics with overall negative impact on the abandoned building. During this research, it became evident that institutional technicalities keep lingering to put the building into adaptive reuse. The study however recommends that stakeholders be educated on the benefit of adaptive reuse of public buildings: a workable model that would be geared towards revamping abandoned public facilities should be created. Lastly, the existing land use characteristics within such area should be considered to ensure that the new use is compatible with the prevailing land use.