Nigerians furious over school collapse
Complaints of derelict building, shoddy rescue
LAGOS, NIGERIA— Outrage mounted at government officials in Nigeria on Thursday over a deadly school building collapse and a shoddy rescue effort that followed.
At least eight people were killed when the three-storey building that housed the Ohen Nursery and Primary School pancaked into the ground about10 a.m. Wednesday. It had been marked for demolition months before it collapsed with dozens of people inside, some of them toddlers.
Authorities called off the frantic, daylong search for survivors early Thursday, after more than 35 people had been pulled from the slabs of concrete.
Officials at the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency said the last person, an adult male, was pulled from the debris at 3 a.m. They denied earlier reports that as many as 100 people had been in the building when it came down.
The structure was on Lagos Island, an area of Africa’s largest city that is known for its poor urban planning. Many of the buildings there have been marked for demolition.
Although the building that housed the school was one of them, it was renovated about a year ago, and a coat of paint was added. Shops and a public restroom occupied parts of the ground floor, and the upper floors contained apartments. Residents had complained of low-quality construction.
On Thursday, people who live near the school expressed outrage at the rescue effort, complaining in particular that it took crews more than an hour to show up. Once the effort began, rescuers told of shortages of water and oxygen masks.
Local officials defended the effort, saying they left for the site as soon as they received a call about the collapse, at 10:06 a.m.
Neighbours, including “area boys,” stereotyped as criminal gang members, dug through the rubble Wednesday to rescue a pregnant woman and others before crews arrived. They stayed through the night, angry that officials could not provide them with even a flashlight.
“Beg the government that this cannot go on,” said Maryam Abdul-Quadri, 25, who lives nearby. “So many lives were just wasted yesterday.”
Residents said the government must act to save them from other unsafe buildings.
They point to unscrupulous builders who erect shoddy structures in crowded areas and pay off officials to look the other way.
“Lagos Island is a litany of buildings about to collapse or already collapsing,” the Socialist Party of Nigeria said. “The reality is that the agencies are more or less bureaucratic conduit pipe for collection of bribes and kickbacks from builders.”
The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria described the situation as “the height of criminal dereliction of duty” among Lagos state officials.