Lagos bans overnight sleeping at construction sites after building collapse kills five

Following the collapse of a two-storey building that claimed the lives of five construction workers at Arowojobe Estate, in the Maryland area of Lagos State, the General Manager, Lagos State Building Control Agency, Gbolahan Oki, has banned people, particularly labourers from sleeping at construction sites in the state.

Oki gave the directive in a statement signed by the agency’s Director of the Public Affairs Unit, Olaoye Olusegun.

The statement read in part, “Henceforth, nobody should be found sleeping in any building under construction after the close of work, especially at night. LASBCA officials will be inspecting construction sites across the state, especially at night, to ensure that nobody is sleeping inside any building under construction.

“Construction period in the state remains from 7 am to 7 pm Monday to Saturday excluding Sundays. Henceforth, any property developer or owners who engage workers to carry out construction work on Sundays and beyond 7 pm on Monday to Saturday will have his or her property sealed indefinitely.”

Oki also directed property owners and developers to engage only professional structural, civil, mechanical, and electrical engineers and architects for their building projects in the state, adding that building project sites that failed to engage professionals would be sealed and possibly removed.

“This directive becomes necessary to safeguard the building construction industry and ensure that buildings in the state are safe, secure, and fit for habilitation,” the statement added.

Sudden collapse

On Thursday, several residents of Arowojobe Estate in the Maryland area of the state, were jolted awake by the sudden collapse of a building under construction in the area.

The two-storey building which is located on Wilson Mba Street on the estate reportedly collapsed around 3:49 am, trapping several construction workers who were asleep in it.

Saturday According gathered that the house was owned by a yet-to-be-identified woman and the construction workers at the site were hired from Ibadan, Oyo State.

Construction work at the site was said to have started earlier this year, and residents mentioned that the labourers had been working day and night when the building caved in and trapped them beneath the rubble.

Following the collapse, emergency responders from the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency, Lagos State Ambulance Service, and the National Emergency Management Agency stormed the scene to commence a search and rescue operation.

Several residents who gathered at the scene were reportedly horrified by the incident as an excavator by LASEMA was deployed to accelerate the rescue operations.

We ran out in terror – Residents

Our correspondent, while assessing the situation at the scene of the incident, observed that the affected building had been brought down to ground zero and the area cordoned off.

The ground was strewn with concrete and a tangled mass of twisted iron bars. An excavator was also seen standing idle at the incident scene.

A pool of water could be seen seeping out of the ground from the corners of the site where the building once stood, lending credence to the swampy nature of the area.

Speaking with our correspondent, one of the residents, Bankole Akinade, said, “This is a swampy area. I still don’t know why the owner chose to build a structure like this in a marshy area and they even built a two-storey, why? The developer should be held liable because I heard that the state government had earlier marked the building.

“The construction workers were from Ibadan; they weren’t too familiar with the swampy nature of the land and had nowhere else to sleep, otherwise, this tragedy shouldn’t have occurred.”

Another resident, who gave his name simply as Juwon, said he was asleep when the building under construction imploded, adding that the noise of the implosion and the alarm raised by residents in the area woke him.

Juwon said, “The building was two-storey and when it collapsed early this morning, the fearful noise and the alarm raised by my neighbours made me get up. I witnessed the rescue operation and I counted about 10 dead bodies. It was a very pathetic scene.

“One of the medical professionals here on the estate attended to some of those injured before they were taken to the hospital. I don’t know which hospital, but I heard it’s in Gbagada.

“Some persons may still be trapped under that rubble because no one is sure of the specific number of workers at that site; there was no list or personal identities. We just saw as they worked there day and night.”

Another resident of the estate, who gave her name only as Mrs Fatima, said the building gave no prior warnings before it collapsed.

She stated, “There were no prior signs or warnings. If there was, those workers wouldn’t have slept there before the building came down. We were all asleep when we heard the bang from the collapse and people screaming.

“My children and I ran out of our house in terror because you never can tell. I have never experienced this kind of a thing before. No one is sure of where the owner of the building stays, but I know the labourers were from Ibadan because I heard them converse while working.”

Five corpses recovered

A preliminary report issued by the Permanent Secretary of LASEMA, Dr Olufemi Oke-Osanyintolu, on Thursday morning disclosed that the corpses of five victims were recovered from the rubble.

 “Five adult males were recovered dead while four adult males were rescued alive, and one adult male trapped under the rubble was also rescued alive by LASEMA and the Lagos State Fire Service. All the men were site workers. They received pre-hospital care on location before being transported to the hospital,” the statement read.

However, some residents, while speaking with our correspondent who visited the incident scene, said more than five corpses were brought out of the rubble.

The victims that were rescued alive were said to have been taken to an undisclosed hospital in Gbagada for medical treatment.

On-the-spot assessment

Officials of the Lagos State Building Control Agency and the Lagos State Physical Planning Permit Authority, among other emergency responders, could be seen conducting an on-the-spot assessment at the scene of the collapse and other buildings in the area.

Our correspondent gathered that two buildings adjoining the collapsed structure had been marked by the state agencies and would undergo integrity tests to ascertain their safety.

At another construction site not too far from the site of the incident, labourers were observed mixing cement and getting ready to erect a new structure.

One of the workers who declined to reveal his name for fear of victimisation, told our correspondent that the job done at the scene of the collapsed building was not up to standard.

He said, “Most of the labourers at that site were just looking for a way to survive; they were doing a shoddy job. We are also in this sector and we can tell. A bungalow should have been built there, not a two-storey structure. The work being done on that building was rubbish, now see what has happened.”

Experts fault regulatory bodies

The latest building collapse in Maryland is one of several structural collapses recorded in the state and across the country this year. Earlier in the month, seven persons escaped death when a two-storey building collapsed on Cameroun Street in the Mushin area of the state.

On May 22, a two-storey building in Aguda, Surulere, partially collapsed during a downpour. Later that same month, about ten persons were rescued when a building in the Iga Idunganran area of Lagos Island collapsed.

Commenting on the spate of building collapse, a member of the executive committee and the past vice president of the Nigerian Society of Engineers, Mayen Adetiba, said, “Everything in Nigeria is now substandard. I have been in this profession for over 50 years, and I have not had any collapse or failure.

“I don’t want to experience this ever because it can kill, thanks to some regulatory bodies that are not doing their job. I’m calling on the Standards Organisation of Nigeria to do its job. The quality of work on sites is also something we should look at.

“This is the result when you don’t use the right professionals with experience. The owners of these buildings believe they can’t get a professional, and that their fees are too expensive, but now the whole thing has collapsed.”

Also commenting, an urban architect and Chief Executive Officer of Haap Living, Ezekiel Bassey, said the lack of regulatory oversight led to people building much faster than they could regulate.

He added, “There is a level of compromise within regulatory bodies as some persons within their units are fine with whatever you are building as long as they have their cut.

“Building collapse is rooted in human ignorance or greed across several levels and again, professionals are not being consulted. In buildings where an architect is hired, a structural engineer is not. This is abnormal in saner climes.”

Reactions

Addressing journalists at the incident site on Thursday, the Director of Operations at LASEMA, Olatunde Akinsanya, disclosed that the state government would conduct material testing on the building to determine the cause of the collapse.

Akinsanya said, “The initial response effort bore good fruits because we rescued five victims. They were treated, and given first aid and medical treatment before they were transferred to a state hospital in Gbagada.

“Of course, we began the search and rescue operations, and we were able to cut down on the number of casualties. As I speak to you, five adults are dead, and that’s sad. We’re still doing search and rescue to see if other lives are at stake. We switched immediately to ground-zero operations. So far, no one has come forward to say he or she owns the property. We’re appealing to the owner to come forward.”

LABSCA’s General Manager also stated that all buildings under construction in the last seven months must be “re-certified by the building control agency to ascertain their structural stability,” adding that citizens must “comply with building codes and regulations to curb the menace of building collapse in the state and avoid unnecessary loss of lives.”

He added, “I appeal to every property owner and developer in the state whose property was not covered by a valid planning permits plan to regularise them and ascertain the structural stability of their building, especially during this rainy season.”