The one-storey building at Sunny Filled, Flour Mills, Estate, Magbon, Badagry, Lagos that collapsed, was an old bungalow, before the owner decided to raise it to a storey building.
According to Vanguard, the land where the construction was ongoing is a swampy area and the reinforcements used were both old and new.
The rubbles of the building indicate that the building was an old bungalow converted to a storey building and most of the iron rods used were reportedly 10mm instead of 16mm.
WITHIN NIGERIA had reported that one-storey building collapse in Badagry area of Lagos state, killing four persons and injuring five others on Wednesday.
Speaking to Vanguard at the scene, Okpe Rahmon, an official of the Lagos State Material Testing Laboratory Monitoring and Enforcement, said: “We are here to pick samples from the building to enable us carry out further investigation to confirm those primary causes, in terms of materials, to find out what was responsible for the collapse. The test will confirm if it was caused by inferior materials and other related issues.”
However, neighbours confirmed that the collapsed building was formally an old bungalow before it was converted to a storey building.
Rahmon added: “It was on this bungalow that the extra floor was added, technically that is absolutely wrong because the foundation for the bungalow couldn’t have carried extra load. So that is like sinking and compressing the existing building.
“So far, from our preliminary site investigation, we haven’t taken some of the samples to the laboratory, we can see that from the rubbles of the steel used, we haven’t seen 16mm, we have only seen 10 mm and 12mm.”
An official of Lagos State government, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said: “I received the news of the building collapse, at 2p.m., on Wednesday. I rushed to the site because I reside here, the police and other rescue operatives were already here. The people doing road construction at the expressway used their excavator to rescue those under the rubbles.
“They actually rescued nine because the 10th person was outside the building but he sustained minor injuries. Four of the construction workers died, who were actually plastering the decking of the building when it collapsed, they brought them out.
“We took those who were still alive and some who were unconscious to the hospital. The other four people died before the excavator could rescue them.”