A handout photo taken and released by Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) on Friday shows emergency workers transporting a man after he was pulled out from the rubble of the collapsed guest house.
Reuters/Lagos
At least 17 people were killed when a guest house under construction at the Lagos headquarters of one of Nigeria’s best-known Christian evangelical pastors collapsed, rescue officials said yesterday.
More than 100 people were hurt when the building collapsed on Friday at the compound in the Ikotun neighbourhood belonging to the Synagogue Church of All Nations.
The church is headed by “Prophet” T B Joshua, who has followers across Africa and around the world.
On Friday, members of the church initially prevented emergency services officials from participating in the rescue work, making it difficult to establish a toll for the dead and injured.
They did not provide an explanation.
“They attacked us, we had to withdraw,” Ibrahim Farinloye, spokesman in Lagos for Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), said, adding the church in Lagos’s Ikotun neighbourhood had not provided a list of casualties.
He said he did not know what had motivated this attitude from the church members. There was no immediate comment on the incident from the Synagogue Church of All Nations.
But yesterday they allowed state rescuers to work.
“We are still working,” Farinloye told Reuters.
He earlier said the lower floors of the building located in the church compound had already been operating as a guest house.
“They were trying to add an additional three floors,” he said, when the building collapsed.
