Abuja building mishap kills one, scores trapped

By Stanley Onyekwere & Mashe Umaru Gwamna

At least one person was confirmed dead while twenty persons escaped death by the whiskers when a two storey Commercial complex under construction in Gwarinpa District of Abuja, the nation’s capital city, collapsed yesterday afternoon, with many trapped under the debris.

This is as the Federal Housing Authority(FHA), revealed that the developer of the building went contrary to their approval.

It was gathered that due to rescue operation by a combined team of several emergency responders including security and paramilitary agencies, the 20 persons were rescued and taken to hospital for proper treatment.

Director Forecasting, Mitigation and Response, FCT Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Mrs. Florence Winigene, confirmed that at the last count, only 20 victims were rescued, and 1 death recorded in the building mishap.

According to an eye witness, John Edwin, several workers at the site, especially laborers conveying blocks to the top decking, were over 40bin number, when the mishap occurred.

Edwin, who claimed to have lived in the area for many years, and that he has always known the place to be a reserved green area.

He however, urged relevant authorities to call the management of Federal Housing Authority to question, for illegally allocating Green areas to commercial complex.

Earlier, while confirming the incident, Director Development Control, Federal Capital Territory Administration ( FCTA), Muktar Galadima, most of the affected persons were construction workers, many of whom were still trapped on the debris of the illfated building.

Similarly, Coordinator, Abuja Metropolitan Management Council ( AMMC) Umar Shuaibu, who noted that while the council won’t appropriate blame to anybody, but that investigation will commence immediately to ascertain both the remote and immediate cause of the collapse.

Shuaibu said: “When the monitoring officers, leave the site and leave the contractor or the developers what they do outside is a different thing entirely. We have to make sure that it is the professionals that are supervising, most of the quacks are involved. When you have quackery anything can happen, however, we are on top of the situation.

“Things like this are very rare in Abuja because of the standard monitoring that we engaged from the monitoring of the city side.

The Housing Authority also has its professionals.

“We are going to hold to ensure that they do the right thing especially those who are involved in this development and definitely if there are punishment to be meted on the actual people that appropriately but now we are focusing on lives to be rescued.”

Responding to the question on the rescue mission being slow, the AMMC boss attributed it to the enormity of challenges involved as the slabs that are over the victims required a machine to lift them up.

“You can see how many machines that are here and you said it’s slow. For an operation like this, we have four excavators working, we have Federal Fire Service, NEMA, all the machines need to conduct this operation are here. In fact, we are very fast , operations like this , at times take two three days before you get to the bottom of the debris”, he stressed.

As at the time of filing this report, rescue operation was still ongoing at the collapse site, situated at 7th avenue of Gwarimpa, in the nation’s capital, Abuja.

Meanwhile, the Federal Housing Authority(FHA), has revealed that the developer of the building collapse went contrary to the authority’s approval.

This was contained in a statement signed and issued by Head Public Affairs, Kenneth Chigelu.

It said the structure, is a commercial privately developed, privately owned, and situated along the 6th Avenue.

He said “Preliminary findings revealed that an approval for 2 floors was granted to the developer, who decided to add an extra floor to the structure”.

According to him, as at the time of collapse, the building was a frame structure with columns, suspended slabs in place, and some block works.

He said rescue efforts are currently going on to save lives, with responses from all relevant agencies.

“ A total of four people have been rescued from the rubbles at the time of this release”.

Meanwhile, investigations are on - going will reveal immediate and remote causes of the collapse.”