Nigeria: Inability of People to Differentiate Grades of Cement Scared Us, Says Odumodu

31 May 2014

Since the controversy on whether or not the grade of cement used in the construction of a house could lead to its collapse, various professionals have tendered their informed opinions, but all of these arguments would end now that the Standards Organisation of Nigeria has reeled out its policy on the acceptable grades for specific building and construction works. The Director-General/Chief Executive, Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), Mr. Joseph Odumodu in this interview with James Emejo says they were scared by the fact that cement buyers are not informed about the grade of cement to use

What is the position of SON on the controversy surrounding the 32.5 and 42.5 grades of cement in the country? Several months ago, I started reading in the papers that there was substandard cement having to do with 32.5 and all that; and I called the technical people around and asked them to take samples of all the cement in circulation both from the factory and in the market. And they checked what we called the critical parameters. There are actually three levels you test cement as a powder. There are specific tests such as loss of emission and insoluble residue that will give you an idea of whether there are impurities in the cement. After that you test what is called mortar- you add cement with sand and water and you test, and that is what they call the comprehensive test. And then the final one is aggregates-what we call gravel or granite and so on. So, when we finished those tests for all the products, there is of course the 32.5 cement, there is 42.5 cement and that classification is based on the 28 days strength calculated in newtons per millimeter square or people call it mega-pascals and all that. And our conclusions were that as far as we were concerned, there were no substandard cement in Nigeria- and I will stand by it.

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