Meantime, the Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola, while condoling with General Overseer of the church, Prophet Temitope Joshua and members of the church, advised that staff and members of the church, should allow emergency workers could do their work. Fashola gave the advice when he visited the scene, yesterday. TB Joshua suggests sabotage over deadly building collapse, Prophet Joshua popularly called T. B Joshua, yesterday, played a footage of the collapsed building as allegedly captured by the Church’s Close Circuit Television, CCTV, camera to his congregation.
The footage showed that the
building, which served as a guest house where people with varying ailments from
within and outside the country put up, caved in at exactly 12.44pm. This was
shortly after an airplane which was captured while hovering round the church’s
premises left.
Joshua narrated how he left
‘prayer mountain’ where he ‘lives’ to return to the church, only to be alerted
by a telephone call, in which the caller told him that a plane was hovering
around the church’s premises. The
structure was initially a two-storey building before it was converted to a
five-storey edifice. Those who were
trapped under the debris included foreigners, some kitchen staff and
construction workers.
Fashola’s directs church
members to vacate siteFashola, during his visit, yesterday, urged Joshua to
prevail on members of the church allow government rescue workers a chance to do
their job unhindered as they (members) were not trained to manage emergency
situations.
“What you need to understand now is that this
place is now an accident scene and so all your staff must leave this place. We
need to take control of this place and have people who have been trained to do
this job to do so.
“So, please ask all your
staff to step down from this place until we finish. When we finish, if you have
any person, whether an engineer or a medical person you want to be on the site
with them, working with them to know what they are taking there, then it is
easier; they can report to you and then report to me.“
But, we can’t continue
rescue operations with your men hanging around here. We understand this is an
unfortunate incident, we understand their sense of sympathy and compassion. But
let them allow those who are trained to do the job to take over and do the job.
It won’t make sense if they are getting in their way.”Joshua, later conducted
the governor and his entourage round the site after an earlier brief, closed
door meeting.
Meanwhile, the Lagos State
Government has expressed wilingness to apply necessary sanction if
investigation found any lapses on the part of the developer and owner of the
building in line with state government policy on such matter.Special Adviser to
Governor Babatunde Fashola on Information and Strategy, Alhaji Lateef Raji made
the remarks while speaking with Vanguard on the development.
It will be recalled that
the state government had commenced investigation into the immediate and remote
cause(s) of the collapsed building.The Lagos State Building and Control Agency,
LASBCA, boss, Mrs Abimbola Animashaun, yesterday, maintained that the state
government could not confirm a trace of any document stating that the building
was approved.
Animashaun, who led her
team to the scene of the incident on Friday, said none of the church members
could provide evidence of approval for the collapsed building.
According to Animashaun:
“We have been here challenging them on the building approval but they haven’t
said anything convincing. They claimed to have approval but we could not
confirm it. They were told to bring the building approval authorised by the
state government but none of them could provide it.
According to source, the correct status of the building’s approval will
emerge as work resumes in government offices today.
may their soul rest in peace
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