The governor of Lagos state, Akinwunmi Ambode has confirmed that some people had lost their lives in a building that housed a school in Ita-faji area of Lagos island collapsed on Wednesday.
The governor noted that, “We have rescued about 25 people, some already dead”.
Recall that InsideOjodu had earlier reported that the three-storey building collapsed around 10am on Wednesday.
The last floor of the building is being used as a school and pupils were in their classrooms when the building caved in. The school had about 100 pupils.
However, Governor Ambode who got to the scene of the incident at about 2:42pm, explained that the occurrence was an unfortunate incident.
He urged the residents to allow rescue operators the space to carry out their operations without any hindrance, so as to rescue more children still trapped under the rubbles.
“I want to commiserate with the families of those that lost their lives in this collapsed building. I want to quickly let Lagosians know that this is quite an unfortunate incident.
All we are trying to do is to scale up this rescue operation. Our response units are already here; we are getting additional cranes to be able to go deeper than where we are now to rescue more lives.
“I just want to appeal to people that when we are doing this kind of rescue operation, yes, sympathizers will naturally come but I want to appeal that they should give the rescue workers the chance to save more lives,” he said.
Meanwhile, most of the buildings in the area had been marked for demolition, but some property owners in the area have defied the notices. The school was reportedly run illegally, InsideOjodu reports.