More than a week after a building collapsed in the premises of the Synagogue Church of All Nations, SCOAN, professional builders in Lagos State, western Nigeria have faulted the claims by the founder of the church, Temitope Joshua, that a "strange aircraft" that hovered several times over the building caused its collapse.
It would be recalled that the five-storey building inside the church's premises in Ikotun, Lagos, collapsed on 12 September.
According to the National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA, 86 dead bodies were recovered from the debris of the collapsed building while 131 others were rescued.
In spite of NEMA's suggestion that the extra floors being added to the Synagogue church could have caused the collapse, the founder of the church had blamed the incident on a "strange aircraft" that flew several times over the building before it collapsed.
In other to substantiate his allegation, T.B Joshua had released a video footage from the church's Closed Circuit Television, CCTV, which showed an aircraft hovering over the building prior to its collapse.
Shadrack Mamzini, a member of SCOAN who took a photograph of the aircraft, said that he initially worried that the aircraft was flying too low for the building.
"By the time the incident happened, there was a lot of talks on it, that maybe the structure was poor… Until the man of God revealed what really happened that I went back to check my photos, all the photos I had taken,"Mamzini, a South African national, told Emmanuel TV, the church's TV arm.
Another member of the Synagogue church,Taiwo Temitayo, who said he was trapped under the rubble for 28 hours, described the building collapse as a"demonic attack."
"One thing I'm 100 percent certain of is that, because I don't want to start naming things, it wasn't a building collapse because this was a building that was meant to last for generations,"Temitayo told journalists in an interview arranged by the church.
However, several professional builders interviewed by Premium Times on Monday, 22 September, 2014, rubbished claim that an aircraft hovering above the building caused its collapse.
"That is not the only structure within that area and I'm sure the aircraft will not be on that their particular one for long, it must have been hovering around,"said Asimiyu Bashir, Chairman of Lagos chapter of the Nigerian Institute of Building.
"Last year, when I was coming back from Benue State or so, I got to Lagos and we could not come down. For over one hour we were hovering around, how many buildings collapsed?
"And we were looking at the top of buildings the level at which that aircraft came close to the building.I don't think it's a possibility,"Bashir added.
Another professional, Adekemi Okusaga, said that she had never heard where a building collapsed because of an aircraft hovering above it.
"The first question that we want to ask is, they should show us the approval plan,"said Mrs. Okusaga of the Building Collapse-prevention Guild, BCG, a group that aims to tackle building collapse in Lagos.
"Who is the structural engineer? Who is the engineer that supervised the construction. If they are able to give us a clue to all those answers, then we know where we are going,"she added.
A day after the church building collapsed, Okusaga said that her organization, which works with artisans as well as professionals, invited all its members to find out those working on the project.
"We brought in our artisans, none of them could tell us that he was the one that did. We couldn't get anyone to point who did the job,"Okusaga said.
"The question now is, who are the professionals that did the job? We are not contesting that they have professionals or that they can't come from anywhere, but show us the professionals, that is the question.
"In a situation where you are asking for facts and figures and you are not able to get it, the rest is a guess,"she added. Mrs. Okusaga also said they approached the church to get information on the incident.
"Our own responsibility is to go there, take samples of the material used, which we did; ask for who and who are the professionals on the job, which we did; ask for who and who are the artisans on the job, which we did," she said.
"We are still expecting answers to our questions,"she added.
Few days after the building collapse, the Lagos State government had said it did not approve the extra structures being constructed at the Synagogue church.
Following the number of South Africans that died from the tragic incident, a South Africa political party, Democratic Alliance, has called for the prosecution of authorities of SCOAN.
President Goodluck Jonathan visited the scene of the tragic incident on Saturday when he came to Lagos for a political rally.
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