Ikoyi building collapse: Death toll rises to 22

Some corps members were among those trapped in the collapsed 21-storey building in Ikoyi, Lagos, Daily Trust can report.  

The building collapsed on Monday. 

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Two more bodies were recovered on Wednesday, bringing the death toll to 22.  

The corps members, said to be serving at the company, Fourscore Heights Limited, were trapped alongside the owner and developer, Mr Femi Osibona.  

An eyewitness, who sells food around the area, said one of the corps members who came to buy food from her escaped by a whisker.

“All the other corps members were trapped. I can’t really ascertain their number, but they are more than two,” she said. 

A source at the NYSC said six corps members were serving at the company, but only one of them, identified as Zainab Sanni Oyindamola, who was of the 2021 Batch B, died.  

Zainab was said to be originally deployed to Maiduguri but was redeployed to Lagos after the three-week orientation.

Her friends and colleagues mourned her on Facebook on Wednesday.

One Agboola Yusuf Olatunji, who posted the late corps member’s pictures, said, “She was among the victims of the 21-storey building collapse at Ikoyi, but we lost her… Sanni Zainab Oyindamola Ayinke. We love you, but Almighty Allah loves you more.”   

One of her relatives said she resumed work at the company about three weeks ago.  

She said: “She has been coming here since then. We don’t even know why they sent her here.

“She was originally posted to Borno, but her mother redeployed her.

“If we had known, we’d have allowed her to continue her youth service in that state. She is the first daughter of her mother and they are just two.”

This is just as more victims’ relatives thronged the scene, crying. 

Another victim was Mr Wale Bob-Oseni, a friend of the developer, who was scheduled to travel to America the day the incident happened.

It was learnt that the developer invited him from the airport to come and see the project before returning to the US only to be trapped when the incident happened.   

His brother, Nurudeen Oseni, told Daily Trust that there was no doubt that the owner was trapped in the building.  

Daily Trust gathered that among the victims were dozens of artisans who came with an engineer believed to be a Pastor from Ibafo. 

Mistakes made from all angles, Sanwo-Olu admits 

Forty-eight hours after the incident, nobody could ascertain the actual number of people that were in the building when the incident happened. 

Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who visited the scene again on Wednesday, admitted that mistakes were made from all angles.

He said the state government was currently carrying out an autopsy of all the corpses recovered.  

He unveiled the list of a six-man panel to probe the remote and immediate causes of the collapse. The committee has 30 days to submit its report.  

Meanwhile, two more bodies were recovered from the rubbles, bringing the casualty figure to 22.  

The governor identified those rescued from the rubbles as Oduntan Timilehin, 26; Sunday Monday, 21; Adeniran Mayowa, 37; Sholagbade Nurudeen, 33; Waliu Lateef, 32, and Ahmed Kanleku, a 19-year-old Beninoise.  

Describing the event as ‘a monumental disaster’, Sanwo-Olu hinted that mistakes must have been made in the process of developing the collapsed structure.  

Architect fault rescue method 

A delegation of the Architects Registration Council of Nigeria (ARCON) led by its president, Dipo Ajayi, visited the scene of the collapsed building yesterday.

Ajayi described the incident as sad and said the council had submitted a proposal to the governor on ways to avoid the occurrence in future.

One of the council’s members, Anibaba Kayode, who is also a former commissioner in the state, told newsmen that the rescue team should have erected a crane that would be lifting the slabs one by one.

“But crushing the slabs the way they are crushing them reduces the possibility of any survivor.”

From Abdullateef Aliyu, Christiana Alabi & Eugene Agha, Lagos