46 dead after Nigerian building collapse
Rescue workers have recovered 46 bodies and rescued 130 survivors from the rubble of a shopping mall and guesthouse which collapsed on the outskirts of Lagos, Nigeria.
The collapse took place on Friday at the campus of renowned Nigerian preacher TB Joshua’s Synagogue Church of All Nations.
Mr Joshua’s church published a video purporting to show a plane flying low over the building four times before the structure collapsed.
He told a church service on Sunday that the building apparently was attacked by Islamic extremists who might have dropped a “chemical substance” from the aircraft.
However, the spokesman for Nigeria’s national emergency management agency, Ibrahim Farinloye, told reporters the collapse was likely caused by construction work to add two floors on top of the four-storey structure without reinforcing the foundations.
Nigeria’s construction industry is bedevilled by endemic corruption that sometimes leads contractors to take shortcuts and use sub-standard products, resulting in building collapses.
People from around the world come to the church on the outskirts of Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital in the south-west, to experience Joshua’s preaching, prophecies and faith healing and to get his blessed water, which some say has miraculous powers.
The collapsed building housed a shopping mall and restaurants on the ground floor and rooms for accommodation above.
Church members initially tried to impede rescue workers but that the problem was resolved on Sunday night, said Mr Farinloye, who added that the search would continue for survivors and bodies among the ruined structure’s cracked cement and twisted steel girders.
