Nigeria’s Ikoyi building collapse: Anger and frustration grows

Anger and frustration is replacing the hope of finding survivors at the site of a collapsed residential building in the wealthy neighbourhood of Ikoyi in Nigeria’s biggest city of Lagos, where at least 20 people died.

The febrile intensity of the rescue operation after the building came down on Monday afternoon has been replaced with the crunching rumble of an excavator digging and lifting concrete slaps without too much care.

Voices of frustrated families and friends who have gathered here occasionally fill the air as they shout at officials who visit the site and disapprove of the rescue crew’s methods.

The Wednesday crowd is smaller compared to the hundreds who gathered here minutes after the building collapsed. They used their bare hands to lift the rubble to try and rescue those trapped.

Meanwhile, the security cordon has grown bigger, along with the number of soldiers and police officers.

A man is overheard telling the workers to wait for a hearse to drive closer to the site instead of carrying the bodies to where the vehicle is parked.

Two bodies were retrieved from the rubble in the morning, but no-one has been found alive since Tuesday morning.

Governor Sanwo Olu told reporters that the search and rescue operation was ongoing.

He added that workers were pumping oxygen and water into the site in case any survivors remained, and that machines were occasionally being stopped to carry out a sound search, where workers call out for survivors and wait to hear a reply.

The governor says the causes of the collapse are not known but there were many irregularities including not having a record of all the people on the site each day. He’s set up an independent panel to investigate and given them a 30-day deadline to reveal their findings.

A desk has now been set up just after the security cordon to take the details of those still missing relatives and support the relatives. But for some, it’s too little too late.