Building collapse in Nigeria: death toll rises to 36

Published on : 11/04/2021 – 11:57

At least 36 people were killed in the collapse of a 21-story building on Monday in Lagos, the economic capital of Nigeria, emergency services said Thursday (November 4th).

“So far, 36 people, 33 men and 3 women, have been extracted from the rubble and there are nine survivors,” said Femi Oke-Osanyintolu, the director general of the State Emergency Management Agency. from Lagos.

Families and relatives of the victims continued to wait for news around the site, three days after the disaster, while heavy equipment was deployed to help clear the huge pile of rubble.

Rescuers “won’t give up until we reach zero point,” said Ibrahim Farinloye of the Emergency Management Agency, adding that larger equipment was brought in on Tuesday evening for the clearing operation. .

Open investigation

The building under construction in Ikoyi, one of Lagos’ most upscale residential and business districts, collapsed on Monday afternoon under undetermined circumstances as several dozen workers were at the site. The exact number of people present at the site at the time of the collapse remains unknown.

On Wednesday, the rescue services had established a death toll of 22, but several bodies were discovered in the rubble during the night, rescuers said.

An investigation was launched to determine the causes of the collapse of the building, which was six stories taller than the building permit allowed.

Repeated collapses

Building collapses are common in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, where construction legislation is regularly flouted and due to the use of poor quality materials.

In October 2020, a building under construction had already collapsed in Ikoyi, leaving eight dead and ten seriously injured. In March of the same year, twenty people were killed in the collapse of a building that housed a nursery and primary school. In 2016, 60 people were killed when the roof of an evangelical church collapsed in Uyo, the capital of Akwa Ibom state, in the east of the country.

In one of the worst such disasters, a building belonging to a church collapsed in 2014 in Lagos, killing more than 100 people, mostly South Africans. The investigation had found structural failures of the building, the construction of which was illegal.

With AFP and Reuters