Lagos - The coroner investigating the collapsed guest house at the Synagogue Church of All Nations (Scoan) in Lagos has appealed to South African authorities to help in the identification of bodies of their nationals who died in the September 12 disaster.
Oyetade Komolafe said on Monday at the inaugural sitting of the inquest set up by the Lagos State Government to investigate the accident, that it was necessary for the South African High Commission in Nigeria to ensure that relations of the victims came forward for the pathologists to get the needed samples of their DNA to compare with the bodies.
“Those corpses have to be properly identified and it is when that is done and the process completed that the bodies will be released to the South African government and they can take them home,” he said.
According to him, the inquest is not a set-up to indict anybody, but it is aimed at unravelling the cause of the incident.
“I want to say this court is not adversarial. We are not here to convict anybody. We are here to find facts. What happened, when it happened, why it happened, how it happened and also to get recommendations from interested parties in their depositions on how to prevent a recurrence of what happened,” Komolafe said.
He called on all interested parties and witnesses to come forward and to testify in order to get to the truth of the matter.
He said the court would visit the site of the collapsed building on Thursday and urged Scoan to make available its closed circuit television (CCTV) footage of the incident.
The court adjourned till October 24 for further hearing.
The founder of Scoan, “Prophet” TB Joshua blamed the collapse on an aircraft which he alleged flew over the building, but government officials say it collapsed because four floors were added to the existing two-storey structure. - Independent Foreign Service
Cape Argus