Structural engineer seeks ban on clay bricks import

Stories by Ime Akpan
Lagos

The Chairman of Amide Clay Industries Nigeria Ltd, Mr. Toyin Adeyinka, has called on the federal government to place embargo the importation of clay bricks into the country.
Speaking recently at the delivery of a N4.5 billion clay factory in Olapeleke Town in Ewekoro Local Government Area of Ogun state, Adeyinka said the continued importation of facing tiles from South Africa and some Asian countries had deprived Nigeria of huge foreign exchange and growth of local industries.
“Before now the company was using the old fashioned permanent clamp kiln with a capacity of 20 million standard bricks per annum.
“We were using the clamp kiln for firing and open air-drying process. Now, we have moved to artificial drying, which is a major step that increased the capacity of our production from barely four million bricks per annum to 20 million bricks,” he said.

Adeyinka, who is a structural engineer, said the factory was sited within the Olapeleke environment because of the availability of raw materials in the locality.
He said clay deposit is in abundance in the area adding that his company had obtained mining licence from the federal government.

“There is a huge demand for bricks in the country. We have been able to convince some arms of government to adopt bricks in the construction of houses. As a structural engineer, there are some structures and we deliberately recommend that they should be light loaded due to the characteristics of bricks. Bricks are lighter and if you want to reduce the load on a particular structure, we advice the builder to adopt clay bricks.
“What we are doing with Amide is a silent revolution. We’re setting up a Nigeria Brick Industry Institute like in the United States, which membership will be opened to the public. It will be a forum to exchange ideas,” he said.