By Olusegun Olanrewaju, Babs Oyetoro and Adekunle Aliyu
Death came calling in large numbers again last week in Lagos. A 21-storey high rise collapsed like a pack of cards, allegedly after an explosion on Gerard Road in the affluent neighbourhood of Ikoyi.
One more body was on Saturday recovered from the site of the collapsed 21-storey building in Ikoyi. The body has brought the number of bodies retrieved from the rubble to 43. There are 15 survivors and 49 persons have reported that their loved ones are missing. In the absence of adequate statistics, some unfortunate ones are still missing.
It is still not known how many people were trapped in the world-class mishap that arguably could have been staved off with adequate regulation. By the time the roll call of the dead, trapped and missing were somehow compiled by the authorities, when you have as the ricocheting fallout was a deluge of anger, anguish, and hair raising posers: What happened?
Some eyewitnesses say before the gigantic fall of the building, there had been some merriment in the controversial edifice. “There were plenty of people there, especially towards the back end…they were eating rice like…may we not eat cursed food…” a visibly distressed narrator offers.
Families, friends, sympathisers, and stakeholders congregated daily at the precincts of the entrance of the badly constructed structure, weeping, waiting, genuflecting, consoling, and mourning as earthmovers battled to rescue the dead and the trapped.
A grieving Lagos State governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, couldn’t have summed the scenario better: That we are again paying a high, high price for a disaster spewed by a cocktail of ‘avoidable’ mistakes.
Expressing his condolences to the families and people involved in the tragic event which he likened to a natural disaster, Sanwo-Olu said, on a note of admittance that “mistakes were made from all angles.” These mistakes will best be revealed by the investigative tribunal constituted by the governor to unravel the immediate cause of the building and proffer ways to aver such future occurrences.
Pity
A visit to the site can only evoke pity. On a column in a pavement lined with white plastic chairs facing the badly constructed entrance at the incident site, sympathisers were seen mourning their loss, human, and material, whatever.
While the cranes and earthmovers were active, some relatives were looking resigned to fate. They had not slept overnight, keeping vigil as rescue work continued. Approached, one of them retorted, on a note of desperation, “the governor said nothing had been confirmed (on casualty figures). That’s dangerous.”
Grief
Families, witnesses, and sympathisers have been downloading their experience of the incident in various segments of the media.
Emotions ran high as relatives of the trapped victims searched for their missing loved ones. A middle-aged woman screamed that her three children were trapped in the building. “How will I start all over, my three children are there. I just want to see them whether dead or alive,” she wept.
One of the missing victims is identified as Wale Bob-Oseni, a real estate dealer and executive director of the African Bureau for Legislative Empowerment.
He was said to be on his way to the United States, just before the incident. Then he had reportedly got a call from the now late Femi Osibona, owner of Fourscore Homes, to check out the ongoing development on his way to the airport. He met his untimely death there.
Samuel Ewulu was one of the victims of the collapsed building. Ewulu had lived in London for many years. He arrived in Nigeria just recently. He had been in Abuja with his childhood friend since he returned to Nigeria.
His friend’s name is Tope, who showed our reporter Samuel’s picture on his smartphone where he was dancing at a party on Saturday that preceded the incident that happened on Monday.
Samuel Ewulu was the last born of the family and was not married. His friend (Tope) flew in from Abuja to Lagos when he heard about the incident. Ewulu’s three sisters also flew in from London and the trio was at the scene of the incident last Wednesday.
The three sisters stayed inside the premises of the collapsed building and refused to go outside even when Lagos State Deputy Governor, Obafemi Hamzat, appealed to them to leave the place. At the scene, the relatives and friends were devastated, sobbing heavily and appealing to the deputy governor, Obafemi Hamzat, to talk to the rescue team to double up their efforts in a bid to save the lives of those that were trapped in the wreckage of the collapsed building.
Some accompanying ladies refused to give any details of themselves, but all they wanted was the recovery of their brother from the rubble.
Ewulu was a friend of Osibona, the developer. He had come to Lagos on the invitation of his friend, only for both of them to die in the rubble.
Tope was too heartbroken to comment on the matter when approached by the reporter to comment. He refused to give his surname but disclosed that he had lived in London for many years with the Ewulus before finally relocating to Nigeria.
He condemned the slow pace at which the rescue team was working, saying if it were to be in Europe, the authorities would have deployed enough equipment to hasten the rescue operation.
Sesan Ajibade, aged 27, was also trapped in the collapsed building. According to his relatives, Ajibade left home on Sunday to resume work on Monday at the site. He was married with a child, and his wife had just given birth to a baby boy. At the site, the mother was weeping profusely, with other members of the family.
A supervisor in the site (named withheld), disclosed that he had ten workers at the site; three labourers, two apprentices, and five bricklayers. As at the time of filing this report, only one of the young boys (an apprentice) had been rescued alive. The supervisor informed that the site engineer, one Mr. Kola, and the Manager, Miss Nifemi, had been brought out dead from the wreckage on Wednesday.
A 26-year-old ex-member of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Zainab Sanni Oyindamola, was also declared dead in the building.
The lifeless body of Zainab, who was working with the construction company, Fourscore Homes Limited, was pulled out from the rubbles on Wednesday.
Sources said the mother of the deceased got her redeployed from Borno State due to the state of insecurity ravaging Nigeria’s North-East.
“We asked her not to go to Borno because of the insurgency, but she went there for the three-week orientation and came back alive, only to come and die. She was a very humble and respectful girl. She would greet everybody when she arrived from work every day. She is the first daughter of her mother, and they are just two,” the source revealed.
Heart-rending was also the story of one Onyinye, a newly-recruited worker who had just joined the company barely a week earlier.
Narrating his experience, one Mr Ajibade said he was the elder brother to the late kola, the site engineer.
Speaking in a disturbed, but calm manner, he told reporters during the governor’s visit that he had been to the hospital to trace the corpse of his brother, but could not find it.
According to him, even though the authorities and hospital staff sympathised with him on the loss, there was little the family could do.
“They wrote the names of those who were alive. We were asked to identify those involved. These are the names we have, et cetera., but there was nothing to show for the efforts,” he said.
Onyinye Enekwe, a graduate of the Nnamdi Azikwe University, had left for Ikoyi where she worked as a second personal assistant to Osibona, owner of Fourscore Homes. Only a week on the job, she found a company in death after resumption of work earlier in the day, precisely at 6am. Her cousin, Chinedu Enekwe, said she the late Onyinye and several others had been trapped in the rubble as of Wednesday afternoon. They were later to die horribly.
Before the collapse
As usual, when buildings collapse in Lagos or elsewhere, there are lots of tales to tell, ranging from the real to the bizarre; the genuine to the counterfeit.
There were intriguing stories about the activities that took place in the building before the tragic collapse that fateful Monday. A supervisor told ThisNigeria that some pillars were being ‘chiselled’ before a loud bang was heard that brought the structure down.
He revealed that a caterpillar operator was assigned the responsibility to chisel the defective pillars earmarked for repair. “Honestly, the pillars were in bad condition and it called for urgent attention. We have had cause to complain to the owner of the building, Mr. Femi Osibona, who assured us that there was no cause for fear.
“Besides, if you are climbing the staircase or you drop something on any of the floors upstairs there was always a disturbing vibration indicating that there was a structural defect. The corrective actions were in progress when the building collapsed,” he revealed.
The worker, who escaped death by the stroke of luck, noted that shortly after he came down from the 12th floor to attend to other assignments downstairs that the building started falling like a pack of cards.
He explained that he had 10 workers trapped in the rubble among them were three labourers, two apprentices, and five mansions.
From accounts, the number of those making the merriment was many. It was alleged that one of the vendors in the premises from a certain part of the country had mysteriously ‘travelled out’ the previous day to the incident.
There were also suggestions that certain ‘traditional rites ‘ were carried out. A distraught family member was overheard saying, “It could not be ruled out. So, You can’t spend N10 million to do medicine?”
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However, what was certain and confirmed by the governor, was that there was no manifest of the workers on the site at the date. This, according to experts, would have detailed the names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, details of next-of-kin, home addresses, among others of the victims.
Sanwo-Olu himself captured the imagery more when he said, “Let us not escalate the situation with caustic comments…there is no doubt that people are angry.”
As the caterpillars were digging for bodies until they found that of the developer, Mr. Femi Osibona, hope began to fade as to possible recoveries. Even the rescue and construction workers engaged with Julius Berger and began to vent loud grunts on the status of their individual and collective safety.
Addressing the press after leaving with words of assurance with some relatives in the Yoruba language, the governor said the state could not lay hands on the list of those working at the site, adding that forensic investigation had to be carried out to identify the victims.
“We’ll be learning from it., on how to address such issues. God will help us,” he emphasised.
Survivors
On the second day of his visit to the incident site on Tuesday, Governor Sanwo-Olu listed the names of some survivors who had been admitted to hospital care, including, Ahmed Kelenku (a Benonois from Cotonou); 21-year-old Sunday Monday (who had fracture); Adeniran mayowa (37); Sholagbade Nurudeen (pelvic injury) and Waliu Lateef.
Action
During his tour, Governor Sanwo-Olu announced that he had signed an executive order to institute a panel of inquiry to probe the cause of the collapse, with terms of reference to get to the root of the matter and prevent future occurrence.
He promised that integrity tests would henceforth be carried out on the building as well as others between the 50 years and above age bracket, to conduct aging analysis on properties.
There were, however, complaints about the institution of the panel of inquiry whose duration of engagement was put at 30 days. The governor added that the building was one of the three high rises in the neighbourhood that rose to 15 floors.
A controversy trails the authorisation of who ordered the ‘upgrading’ of the collapsed structure to 21 storeys.
The governor capped his speech with the announcement of the indefinite suspension of the chairman of the Lagos State Building Control Agency (LABSCA), Gbolahan Oki.
Members of the panel of inquiry probing the ‘Gerard Road’ incident are Tayo Ayinde (The president of Nigerian Institute of Physical Planning (NIPP); Dr. Akintilo Idris Adelekea structural engineer; Godfrey O. Godfrey; Mrs. Bunmi Ibrahim (a lawyer and property dealer) and Ekundayo Ogunjobi, another lawyer, who is to serve as the secretary.
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All the way from Abuja, the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Usman Baba, came to visit the wreckage. He promised action against the people responsible for the incident by the Federal authorities.
Forward
Residents are hoping that adequate measures would be taken to forestall the increasing rate of traumatic building collapse in Lagos. It is also hoped that the government’s promise of identifying corpses through a ‘systematic metric system’ of identification or autopsy would be improved upon. The government, citizens also hope, would equally fulfil its promise to take care of the victims and their families.
