Codeblues:
Op are u sure the building is taller than Union Bank head office in Marina?

sugarbelly3:
Abuja World Trade Center will be the tallest once it's completed this year

kay29000:
Yep! I t has always been the tallest building in Naija ever since I was a kid in KC back in the early 90s.

sugarbelly3:
Abuja World Trade Center will be the tallest once it's completed this year

iamord:

Floreat

JaredNomak:
Wrong!

They're not more than 25 storeys

sugarbelly3:
Abuja World Trade Center will be the tallest once it's completed this year

lekjons:
At times I wonder how those tall buildings stood firm on the ground..

Eberex:
When I was a kid, I sometimes follow my dad to his work place at marina. I always look forward to seeing this building, and back then I can say I fell in love with it. I called it NET. Can't remember where I heard that from but anyway, this post brought back good old memories

Eberex:
When I was a kid, I sometimes follow my dad to his work place at marina. I always look forward to seeing this building, and back then I can say I fell in love with it. I called it NET. Can't remember where I heard that from but anyway, this post brought back good old memories

naptu2:


@ bold. The building was owned by the Nigerian External Communications Department (NET or NECOM).


Two agencies were responsible for telecommunications services in Nigeria before 1985: -

Posts and Telegraphs (later Posts and Telecommunications) Department (P&T) was responsible for domestic telecommunications services.

Nigerian External Telecommunications Department was responsible for international telecommunications services (between Nigeria and the rest of the world).


The telecommunications department was merged with NET in 1985 to form Nitel, while the Posts Department was transformed into Nipost.

Topman0001:

Quickly browse the detail of the millenium tower and view pictures. Its 170 mtrs tall. Gonna be taller than the world trade centre in Abuja.

kay29000:
Yep! I t has always been the tallest building in Naija ever since I was a kid in KC back in the early 90s.

fairygeh:
Looking at the pics alone gives me the chills. I have got mad phobia for heights.

sundoj08:
and i was planning to take you on a sky diving date

naptu2:
NECOM House/Net Building was commissioned by the Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters (the defacto Vice President) Major General Shehu Musa Yar'Adua in 1978. It was the tallest building in West Africa at the time.

www.nairaland.com/attachments/462246_Necom_House_jpg63621e3ca83edb81acc318b30a167e1f

The building was owned by NET/NECOM. Telecommunication services were provided by two government departments at that time. The first was the Post and Telecoms Department (P&T) which provided domestic telecommunications services and the other was the Nigerian External Telecommunications Department (NET or NECOM).

Net Building was often used by the NTA and foreign tv stations (and also by the Nigerian government) as a symbol of Nigeria. The US had the Statue of Liberty, London had Big Ben, Paris had the Eiffel Tower, Egypt had the Pyramids, Moscow had the Kremlin and Nigeria/Lagos had Net Building.



The building could be seen from most parts of the main city (Lagos Island, Ikoyi, Victoria Island, Yaba, Surulere, etc). It had a powerful revolving light, almost like a lighthouse, that illuminated many parts of the city at night (especially when there was a power outage) and you could also easily see its red beacon.

Then the building caught fire in 1983. I was actually very close to it on that day. I was on Broad Street and I heard the sirens, but I didn't know that anything unusual was happening. Most banks had their headquarters on Broad Street, the CBN headquarters was also on Broad Street and there were also quite a few ministries there, so it wasn't unusual to hear lots of sirens from bullion vans and minister's motorcades in the course of the day. My sister was close to the Federal Fire Service headquarters on Campbell Street and she could see the fire trucks leaving the station, so she knew that there was a major fire, but it wasn't until our driver showed up in the evening that we knew that there was a fire at Net Building. He said that the police had cordoned off Marina Street, part of Broad Street and Cable Street, so we had to go through Tokunboh Street and Igbosere Road to get to Ikoyi. You could see the smoke all the way from Ikoyi.

President Shagari stopped by to see the burning building on his way to the airport. The crowd that had gathered to see the fire threw stones at him and his motorcade.

I wanted to watch the Network News (which was at 8 o'clock back then), but I was so tired that I slept off. I watched the abridged version at 11 o'clock and it was terrible. Some people (including a pregnant woman) jumped down to their deaths while trying to avoid the fire. The building was thoroughly burnt. My sister wondered why the fire service didn't use a life net to rescue people (she had obviously watched too many episodes of Fire House. A life net would not have saved people jumping from such a great height).

A committee was set up to investigate the fire and one of its findings was that it was impossible for the fire service to contain the fire and rescue people because they did not have a snorkel (aerial platform). There was no snorkel in the whole country at that time. The committee recommended that the government should buy a snorkel for the fire service.

A snorkel
[img]http://www.firehouse.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=10569&stc=1&d=1162929788[/img]


It took more than a decade for the reconstruction work on Net Building to be completed. Foreign tv stations, including the BBC and CNN often showed the building, with its blackened out mid section, in their reports about Nigeria. It was an embarrasment. The restoration work wasn't completed until the late 1990s.

The government bought a snorkel for the Federal Fire Service. It was kept at its headquarters on Campbell Street. I often saw the firefighters training with the snorkel in the 1980s. There's a tower at the Federal Fire Service Headquarters and the firefighters would practice rescuing people from the tower with the aid of the snorkel.

However the snorkel soon broke down and it was still not functioning when Nepa Building on Awolowo Road caught fire on Saturday April 21st 1990 (the eve of the Orkar Coup). The firefighters at the Awolowo Road Fire Station said that there was another snorkel at the State House (Dodan Barracks) Fire Station on Ribadu Road, but the firefighters there refused to deploy it without permission from the President.

I met an architect in the 1980s who was an alumni of my school. He said that they were planning to build a building on the Marina that would be taller than "your beloved Net Building". That building became the Union Bank Building. Net Building is taller than Union Bank Building if you include the huge telecommunications mast at the top of Net Building, but Union Bank Building is taller if you exclude Net Building's mast. The first thing that Union Bank's management did when the building was completed was to buy a snorkel. There was a fire at one of those tall buildings on Broad Street in the early 2000s and the Lagos State Fire Service were virtually helpless and couldn't stop the fire. However, the Union Bank Fire Service deployed their snorkel and were able to stop the fire and save the building. The Managing Director of the company that owned the building showered praises on Union Bank and couldn't stop thanking them when he was interviewed on the news.

Net Building and Union Bank Building tower above all the other buildings on the Marina.


The Tinubu Government came to power in 1999 and decided to equip the emergency services. They bought brand new vehicles and bullet proof vests for the RRS (Marwa had bought old second hand vehicles for Operation Sweep) and I was really impressed with the new ambulance service (LASAMBUS, the first readily available public ambulance service in Nigeria), but I was totally shocked by what they did to the fire service (I had often complained that there weren't enough fire trucks, stations and hydrants in Lagos).

The Tinubu Administration bought lots of Green Goddesses for the fire service. Green Goddesses?? Surely we could do much better.

Green Goddesses are fire trucks that were used by the British Army and Auxiliary Fire Service in World War 2 and the Cold War. Most of these trucks were made in the 1940s and '50s. They were used whenever the regular fire services were overwhelmed or when they went on strike (eg the Fire Brigade strike of the late 1990s and the 2002 strike). The British public realised (during the 2002 strike) that these vehicles were ancient and put pressure on the government to replace them. These were the vehicles that the Lagos State Government bought.

A Green Goddess.



Then came the Fashola Administration. They changed the philosophy of the Lagos State Security Trust Fund. They adopted a needs based strategy (rather than having the government just buying what they wanted to buy). The emergency services would give the Security Trust Fund a list of what they require. They would then defend their demands before the board of the trust fund before the trust fund would procure the items required. This was because it was realised that officers and men of the emergency services were the experts in their fields and they knew what they needed better than anyone else.

It was at this time that many snorkels were bought for the Lagos State Fire Service (for the first time), many new fire stations were built and fire hydrants were installed across the state.

Lagos State Fire Service. Snorkels on the left and water tankers on the right.
[img]http://2.bp..com/_bDcpR_wJ7hk/S6AF1P-ftrI/AAAAAAAADTk/w9axsnCmJJo/s1600/6.jpg[/img]

There's a new fire station at Onikan (just a short walk from Net building) and there's a snorkel at that fire station.

A snorkel fighting a fire in Lagos.
[img]http://3.bp..com/-cFvtk6JXv8M/UneK7TclHcI/AAAAAAAAHNw/4Dvw395jXlA/s1600/fire+002.jpg[/img]

hoshodie:
PROUDLY KCOB

MrProducer:
Not tall though
I don't need a parachute to jump from the top

kay29000:


Floreat!

hoshodie:
FLOREAT!

kay29000: