- Safiu Kehinde
Residents of Adu street in Aguda-Ogba area of Lagos state have expressed their disbelief over the school building collapse which occurred yesterday.
NPO Reported that the residents were on Monday thrown into a state of panic after the three-storey building of Yemco Primary and Comprehensive College came down crashing into rubbles.
In the wake of the incident, officials of the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency (LASEMA) and other building control agencies on Tuesday arrived at the scene of the incident for assessment and evaluation.
LASEMA boss, Oke Osanyintolu, confirmed that no casualty was recorded as all the students and staff of the school were successfully evacuated before the collapse.
Osanyintolu declared that the buliding collapse was an emergency as not a disaster as purported by media reports.
He further claimed that the agency had on several occasions raised alarm and repeatedly issued warning to the school management over the building.
However, some witnesses and residents claimed that the the school which had been in the community for over 30 years had never given any sign of impending collapse until yesterday as they expressed their disbelief over the incident.
Speaking to NPO Reports, Mrs. Gift David, a food seller whose stall was directly attached to the school fence disclosed that building never gave any sign of possible collapse until the early hours of Monday when neigbours began to hear cracking sounds.
“Some customers were here yesterday. They said I should go and get minerals for them. Make I come here, na him something fell down. Before I came back to pick pure water, I saw these two women who went to the opposite side.
” I asked them what happened. they said something dey dun gbangban for here.
“My neighbour con dey dey tell me say this house don dey fall for. I say which house?
“She say make I look up. If I look up, the thing just sounded again, lf it sounded like that, it will just crack.
“Naso my neighbour say make go tell the Yemco people say the house dey sound.
“They carry all the children come out. Before he reach one minute, the house fell down.” Mrs Gift said.
She however maintained that the building never gave sign of collapsing until yesterday.
On his part, Folawemo Sadiq, who lived in the street opposite the school, said the incident occurred around 12am.
“I was inside when I heard the noise with the people shouting and trying to get the students out of the building.
“It is someone from the back of the building that rushed to alert the owner of the school.
“To God be the glory, they evacuated the students and some minutes after, the building collapse.
“There was no prior notice before that the building was bad. Looking from the outside, there was no evidence that the building was bad.” Sadiq said.
He however allayed concern over the state government’s vow to conduct comprehensive investigation and evaluation of the entire environment.
“I think that is the process. Nothing like this has happened in this area before. If anything like this happened, it will give the government the insight of going around.
“This will give them another opportunity to do more investigation on how the buildings were erected just to save lives of people and stop this kind of scenario from happening again.
“If demolishing is what will make the environment safe, then I don’t see anything bad in it.” Sadiq added.
More details later…