Few days after rescue efforts at the site of the collapsed guest house of the Synagogue Church of All Nations in Lagos ended, a survivor said everything happened so fast after he saw a crack on the wall.
Narrating the ordeal to Channels Television on Saturday, Temitayo Taiwo said that after the sharp crack on the wall, he wanted to look closely at it, as it was an abnormal crack, before the ground he was standing caved in.
“On that fateful day, we were about to serve lunch and the visitors needed plastic cups to take water from the water dispensers so they can have their food properly and I was distributing the cups. I had already put some cups on the water dispensers in different points and I just finished with the fourth one, I think, and I just stand around and I saw ahead, a sharp crack and it went straight.
“My spirit told me this wasn’t normal and I shouted Jesus and I docked and next thing, everything blacked out. When I woke up, I saw everywhere was dark. There was no breathing space whatsoever, there was no light,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Director of Search and Rescue National Emergency Management Agency, Air Commodore Charles Otegbade, said that the agency had cross-checked the death toll figures with other agencies and had arrived at 86 as its final number of deaths recorded in the building collapse.
He said that “majority of the people were most likely to be South Africans”, who were usually housed in the collapsed building.
“There is need for us to carry out forensic investigation to be able to determine who and who are the victims,” he, however, said.
