UPDATE ON IKOYI BUILDING COLLAPSE: 10 dead, 9 recovered alive from rubbles

Ten corpses, as at Tuesday afternoon, have been retrieved from the rubbles of the 21-storey building which collapsed on Gerrard Road, Ikoyi, Lagos, on Monday.

Also, nine persons have been recovered alive since rescue operations started around 4pm on Monday.

This update was announced by the deputy governor of Lagos State, Obafemi Hamzat, who paid a visit to the scene of the incident Tuesday.

Hamzat said the building had been sealed for four months, between July and November 2020.

According to him, “This is now a search and rescue operation and our mission is to get people out of here. This morning we took out two people and they are doing well in the hospital. Totally, we’ve taken nine people out and they are in the hospital and some have been discharged and we’ve sadly taken out 10 dead bodies.

READ: EXCLUSIVE: Structural engineer warned about integrity of collapsed Ikoyi building

“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 test and saw some anomalies and shut it down and said those things should be corrected.

“The other two buildings will also be audited in terms of integrity test and of course if we see anything, appropriate actions will be taken. 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.

“This particular building that collapsed was approved for 21 floors, three years ago, not 15 floors. It’s the construction that failed apparently.”