Two dead, 4 hospitalised as building collapses in Abuja

The FCT Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has confirmed the death of two persons and the rescue of four individuals at a collapsed wall in Ademola Adetokunbo Crescent, Wuse II, Abuja.

The Director-General of FEMA, Dr Abbas Idriss, confirmed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Wednesday.

Idriss said: “Around between 10 a.m to 11 a.m., we received a distress call that there was a building collapse beside the United Bank for Africa Bank (UBA) at Ademola Adetokunbo Crescent, Wuse II.

“We quickly activated our rescue team to go there and on getting there they saw it was a wall that fell on artisans working around the area. So far six people were removed from the rabbles and two have died while four are in the hospital at the moment.

“It is a building under construction and they have eaten into the building next to them because it is not their building that fell it is the neighbour’s building that fell on them.”

The director-general said that the agency had been sensitising FCT residents on the need to abide by building approvals and the Abuja Master Plan.

He called on stakeholders saddled with the responsibility of granting building approvals in the FCT, like the Department of Development Control, Department of Engineering Services and other agencies, to ensure that they give proper approval and monitored constructions in all locations.

“That is the only way to guard against the situation because the approval is supposed to be in phases as you give approval in phase one, when they do according to specification you now give them approval for the second phase that is how it should be.

“But if you give a blanket approval to just go and start the building they can build with whatever material they can. However, in this case, as I said earlier, we are not talking about the usage of inferior materials.

“It is because they extended their building and ate into the neighbourhood structure, which eventually collapsed on the artisans,” said the FEMA chief executive.

By NAN