2014 disaster in Lagos State, Nigeria
On 12 September 2014, a guesthouse located within the Synagogue Church Of All Nations (SCOAN) premises around the Ikotun-Egbe area of Lagos State collapsed completely to the ground. The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and other emergency services were criticized for withholding information about the accident, and much remained unclear about the number of deaths and their nationalities.
Incident.
On 12 September 2014, a guesthouse collapsed in the SCOAN's premises in Lagos killing at least 115 people, 84 of them were South Africans.
Casualties.
Nigerian emergency services refused to release the nationalities of the victims, but other countries have provided some details about those who died. The vast majority of casualties were from South Africa, but the nationalities of dozens of people remained unclear.
Reactions.
The then governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Fashola, ordered all church workers away from the scene in order to properly rescue trapped bodies. The government also claimed the church did not get government approval before construction. Journalist Nicholas Ibekwe released an audio recording that allegedly captures T.B. Joshua offering bribes to journalists in return for reporting the incident in a way that favorably portrayed the church.
Cause.
The senior pastor of the church, T. B. Joshua has linked the tragedy to a strange aircraft "hovering" above the building shortly before it fell. A video was released on YouTube that allegedly showed the plane hovering around the building before its collapse. However, the coroner's report unequivocally found the cause to be due to structural failure. Three government agencies, the Nigeria Building And Road Research Institute (NBBRI), the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) and the Building Collapse Prevention Guild (BCPG), examined the site and found the following inadequacies:
Trial.
Joshua failed to appear at a November 2015 hearing and SCOAN's lawyers have filed multiple applications to stay the proceedings. The Lagos state government has repeatedly insisted that this case receive trial.
Local radio host Freeze made unfavorable comparisons to a similar incident in Lekki, in which Lekki Gardens managing director Richard Nyong was jailed for illegally unsealing a building that he was having constructed and that which later collapsed. Freeze was upset because Nyong had been arrested quickly, but Joshua had not.
References.
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