The Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, on Tuesday, ordered the indefinite suspension of the LASBCA GM over the incident. Sanwo-Olu, in a statement by the state Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Mr Gbenga Omotoso, said the government had also set up a panel to probe the tragedy.
The governor said, “The government will surely find out what went wrong and punish those indicted. The governor, as a first step, has directed that the General Manager of the Lagos State Building Control Agency, Mr Gbolahan Oki, an architect, be suspended from work immediately. The suspension is indefinite.”
It could be recalled that the General Manager had in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria, said the owner of the building got approval for 15 storey-building and not 21.
He also added that inferior materials were used for the construction, saying appropriate actions would be taken. But the state deputy governor, during a visit to the scene on Tuesday, said the collapsed building was approved for 21-storey building three years ago.
However, the Deputy Governor Obafemi Hamzat contradicted the LASBCA General Manager saying that approval for the building was for 21 floors. “This particular building that collapsed was approved for 21 floors three years ago not 15 floors, it’s the construction that failed, apparently.”
He added that the building was sealed for four months in 2021 when the state government noticed some anomalies in the construction.
He said, “The operation, as you can see is going on and we will not leave until we are able to account for everybody. We are responsible for the people of the state; our focus is on saving lives.
“As a matter of fact, this place was sealed for about four months sometime last year from July to November because our agency came in to do structural tests and saw some anomalies and shut it down and said those things should be corrected.
“They were making corrective actions when this happened. At the time this happened, they were not really constructing, but investigations later will show what really happened.
“The deputy governor noted that the actual number of occupants of the uncompleted building at the time of its collapse was unknown. He said more equipment and personnel had been deployed in the site to save more lives”.