LAGOS - An unknown number of people died
and up to 100 children were among those feared trapped after a
four-storey building containing a primary school collapsed in
Nigeria's commercial capital Lagos on Wednesday.
Workers on top of the rubble shovelled debris away as
thousands of people swarmed around the site to watch, many of
them angry or hysterical, with police, ambulances, Red Cross
workers, fire trucks and a fork lift in their midst.
Residents said around 100 children had attended the school,
which was on the top levels of the building, and that eight had
been rescued so far.
A Reuters reporter saw a boy of 10 being pulled from the
rubble, covered in dust but with no visible injuries, and the
crowd erupted into cheers as another child was pulled out.
Lagos Governor Akinwuni Ambode visited the site and offered
commiserations to bereaved families, but did not say how many
had died.
A spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency's
southwest region said casualty figures were not yet available
but that many people including children were believed to be
trapped.
The Lagos emergency management agency said 10 people had
been recovered alive since emergency responders arrived, and
others beforehand.
Ambode said the school had been set up illegally and that
buildings in the area were undergoing integrity testing.
The building was in the Ita-faji area of Lagos island, the
original heart of the lagoon city before it expanded onto the
mainland. Local resident Yomi Olaniyi, 42, said four buildings
had collapsed in the area in the past few years.
A Google photograph of the collapsed building from early
2017 shows no sign of a school inside. The fourth storey only
had the words "Olulade Villa (Psalm 27)" painted across its
balcony.
Building collapses are frequent in Nigeria, where
regulations are poorly enforced and construction materials often
substandard.
In 2016, more than 100 people were killed when a church came
down in the southeast, and in Lagos the same year, a five-storey
building collapsed, killing at least 30 people.
A floating school built to withstand storms and floods also
collapsed in Lagos in 2016, though no injuries were reported.