From Fred Itua, Abuja
Months after a building collapse in Abuja claimed some lives, another has occurred at Ademola Adetokunbo Crescent, Wuse II, the nation’s capital.
According the Director-General of FCT Emergency Management Agency, Abbass Iddriss, six people were evacuated from the debris out of which we recorded two fatalities and four others who sustained different degrees of injury were rushed to the hospital.
Exolaining what transpired, Iddriss said: “Between 10 to 11 am, I received a distressed call that there was a building collapse around Wuse Zone 2 at Ademola Adetokunbo beside UBA so we immediately deployed rescue team to go there . On getting there we discovered that it was a wall that fell on the artisans working on the UN completed building.
“The UN completed building was not the one that collapsed , it was the fence of a building close to it, what happened was that they ate into the foundation of the fence of the UBA building and the wall fell on them.
“The cause of the collapsed fence is that the contractors ate into the foundation of the UBA fence that fell on them .
“The best we could do is to sensitise the people to know what to do and also to call on stakeholders those approving agencies, Development Control, Engineering Services to ensure that they give the proper approval and ensure that they monitor constructions going on in all allocations.
“The approval is supposed to be in phases , when you do approval in phase 1 when they do according to specifications, then they approve the second phase. Given blanket approval to just go and start building they can build with whatever materials they like.
“In this case we are not talking about the materials used but they extended the …. I can’t hear it clearly again due to the breeze. I am on transit.”