International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Review

This research was conducted to examine the spatial difference in the level of compliance with building Law across residential built up districts in Calabar Metropolis. The sources of data collected for this research include: direct measurement of the physical characteristics of buildings, requirements under the Cross River State Building Law of 1984 as amended in 1987 and questionnaires administered to owners of the buildings. The analysis of the result obtained from the field was done using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 11.0. A one- way analysis of variance was adopted with compliance as dependent variable and residential districts as independent (categorical) variable, to test for the significance of the difference between the level of compliance with building Law and the residential districts in Calabar Metropolis at 5 per cent confidence level. An F ratio of 19.98 was obtained, hence retaining the alternative hypothesis and rejecting the null hypothesis. In classifying compliance in the study area, buildings that fully complied with the law were scored 100 per cent to fall into the good class, while those that fell below 100per cent belonged to the poor class further categorized into poor (the best of the poor), poorer (average poor) and poorest (the poorest of the poor). Edim Otop residential district was the lowest in terms of level of compliance (55.28) and fell within the poorest compliance classification. Esuk Utan with 92.26 mean compliance level was the overall best within the poor compliance class followed by the University of Calabar Satellite Town and Essien Town with 90.66 and 90.62 respectively. Although better than the entire study area (77.05) which was within the “poorer compliance” class, the three best still fell within the “poor compliance” classification as against the 100 per cent full compliance (good class) expected under the law. Whereas, buildings within the poorest and “poorer compliance” classification had higher factor of risk than those in the poor level of compliance, it is important to note that none of the 13 districts of the study area falls into the good class expected under the Law.The recommendation is that there should be improved compliance with building law across built up residential districts of Calabar Metropolis.