Another building collapses in Lagos.

 

.Sanwo-Olu vows to sanction culpable officers in Banana Island building collapse

.Indicts federal agencies over unapproved extensions

IBRAHIM QUADRI

 

Lagos State on Sunday recorded another building collapse at Ladipo 45 Oluwole, Street, GRA Apapa area of the State as a three-story structure caved in.

 

With latest development, officials of Lagos State Building Control had sealed off the building which was said to be under construction.

 

The latest building collapse in Lagos came barely 24 hours after the State Governor, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu went for on-the-spot assessment of a seven story building collapsed in Bananna Island area of the state.

 

Sanwo-Olu during the inspection that lasted more than four hours gave a marching order for the demolition of many more buildings on the Island.

 

According to report, the collpase of the building in Apapa was due to thunder strike orchestrtated by heavy rains early today.

 

A Volunteer with the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corp in Ajeromi Ifelodun LCDA, Asimiyu Tiamiyu who was among the early callers at the scene said no casualty was recorded in the incident.

 

According to him, all the workers at the site of the collapsed building had embarked on Sallah break, reason why no one was involved in the incident.

 

He noted that the state government must beam a searchlght on the recurring incident of collpase building which had claimed many lives and property worth billions of naira destroyed.

 

Also, Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu on Saturday blamed the collapse of the seven storey building on First Avenue, in Banana Island, Ikoyi, on what he called “reckless” operations of some developers hiding under the pretext of Federal Government agencies issuing  building approval.

 

Sanwo-Olu made the remark when he led a delegation of government officials on the spot assessment of the incident, describing the situation as “irresponsible and unacceptable.”

 

Sanwo-Olu, was led on the inspection by the Commissioner for Physical Planning and Urban Development, Tayo Bamigbose-Martin, Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Gbenga Omotoso, General Manager, Lagos State Building Control Agency, LABSCA, Gbolahan Oki, and other engineers.

 

The Governor on the inspection which lasted for more than four hours also ordered the demolition of a number of buildings considered to have structural defects while others were built under powerline.

 

While addressing reporters during the inspection, Sanwo-Olu said, “Like has been reported before now, there is a lot of investigations going on. You can see that they are still clearing the rubble.

 

“The exercise we are doing today is not just about this location. The extent of what I would call unapproved extensions. We are at the back of the land that is aborting. You can see that the original line for Banana Island s even not here, it is a way in front and you can see that here is several extensions granted by both Federal ministry of Works and Housing and NIWA. These are the two federal agencies that have been culpable for those extensions. They have done these extensions without our knowledge.

 

“We have responsibility for building approval. All of the four buildings at the back, they never got our approval. This is illegality that is real and that is why we are going round the properties.

 

“The excuses that have been given that they don’t have access is not acceptable. It is total recklessness by all the developers and the officers that are culpable will also be sanctioned.

 

“But what we are doing now is, we have set up an external committee who are given two weeks to independently ascertain what has gone wrong here and they should finish the work towards the end of next week. This will further strengthen our hands to be able to come up with a robust work plan that we can enforce going forward.

 

“It is heartbroken each time we have to go through this and it shows how irresponsible both the developers, some of our cituzens that just want to make quick money and of course our officers who are not alive to their responsibility.

 

“We have had to change staff here and there so that we can bring forward robust and very strong monitoring offices but we are still short of it, I must say. We need to do what we have to do to keep the lives of our cituzens safe at all times.”

 

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