Mother, child, 17 confirmed dead in crumbled 5-storey house

The Lagos State Emergency Management Agency (LASEMA), and the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), have confirmed the death of a mother and her child as well as 17 people in the five-storey

According to a release by NEMA, 13 people who were also rescued from the rubbles of the building are still in critical condition at the Lagos Island General Hospital.

The horrific incident occurred after a heavy morning down pour at the Horizon 1, Lekki Gardens in Ikate, along the Lekki-Epe Expressway.

Many of the victims were workers and as squatters who slept in the building while the dead woman was said to be a food vendor at the building site.

Other victims were said to be a woman and her two children who came to Nigeria on Monday from Cotonou, Benin Republic, who had come to Lagos to visit her husband, a construction worker who had not visited the family for some time.

According to an iron bender at the site who survived the crash, Fidelis Anjolo, the woman did not believe her husband’s story that he was being owed as a result of which he could not travel back to see his family and had to come down to see things for herself, only to be a victim.

On the probable cause of the building collapse, the General Manager of the Lagos State Building Control Agency (LASBCA), Shola Adeigbe, said:

“I learned that there was an approval for the building from the district officer. The materials used for the construction were poor materials. It was a foundation failure because it sank before collapsing.

We will subject the entire building to structural stability test. The only thing for us is to ensure that they construct with quality materials.”

But Lekki Gardens, the owners of the building, claimed to have ordered stoppage of work in January at the site when it was discovered that substandard materials were being used.

In a statement, the company said:

“The management of Lekki Gardens has confirmed an unfortunate incident today, Tuesday March 8th, 2016, where a building collapsed at about 4am in the morning, at one of its residential estate project in Lekki.

The building which was under construction was meant to house a number of apartment units but construction work had been suspended in January 2016 over reported structural defects."