There has been a considerable body of literature of late about issues that contribute to overall poor building structural design practices in Nigeria. Steel reinforcement is the primary load resisting element of reinforced concrete buildings and has received attention in research. However, a common theme with these studies is that none of them derived characteristic strengths of their steel samples, instead typically determining the average yield strength of steel from different samples of steel. The characteristic yield strength of steel is a value that is lower than 95% of the yield strength of steel samples. In this study, one of these studies in Abuja is examined in more depth and the characteristic strength of its steel samples is derived. This characteristic strength of steel is then used to redesign a building that has already been built in Abuja. It was found that the characteristic strength was inadequate structurally.