Building containing school collapses in Nigeria's Lagos

A building containing a school collapsed in Nigeria’s commercial capital of Lagos on Wednesday, an emergency agency spokesman said.

At least one person was killed and dozens of children were among those feared trapped after a four-storey building containing a primary school collapsed .

Adeshina Tiamiyu

, General Manager of the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency , said that the agency had recorded one death so far in the disaster, and had rescued nearly 50 people.

“We will be able to give total figures in the morning after we have cleared to the ground floor,” Tiamiyu said.

Workers on top of the rubble shoveled debris away as thousands of people swarmed around the site to watch, many of them angry or distraught. Police, ambulances, Red Cross workers, fire trucks and a forklift were on the scene.

Residents said around 100 children had attended the school , which was on the top levels of the building.

A spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency ’s southwest region said many people, including children, were believed to be trapped.

Lagos Governor Akinwunmi Ambode

visited the site and offered condolences to bereaved families. Ambode said the school had been set up illegally and that buildings in the area had been undergoing structural testing prior to the accident.

The collapsed building is in the Ita- faji area of Lagos I sland , which was the original heart of the lagoon city before it expanded onto the mainland.

Outside the hospital where people taken out of the building were taken for treatment, anxious relatives sobbed and ran toward ambulances as they arrived, hoping their loved ones were inside. Some fell to their knees with tears streaming down their faces.

A Google photograph of the collapsed building from early 2017 shows no sign of a school inside. The fourth storey only had the words “ Olulade Villa ( Psalm 27 )” painted across its balcony.

Presidency Muhammadu Buhari

said in a statement he was “extremely saddened” by the building collapse.

Building collapses are frequent in Nigeria

, where regulations are poorly enforced and construction materials are often substandard .

In 2016 , more than 100 people were killed when a church came down in the southeast, and in Lagos the same year, a five-storey building collapsed, killing at least 30 people.

A floating school built to withstand storms and floods

also collapsed in Lagos in 2016 , though no injuries were reported.

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