Synagogue: Police set up team to probe building collapse

Police authorities, over the week, constituted a team of detectives to carry out thorough investigation into the circumstances which led to the collapse of a six-storey building within the premises of the Synagogue Church of All Nations, SCOAN.

Reliable police sources said the team is led by an Assistant Commissioner of Police in charge of one of the Area Commands in the state.This was even as the National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA, has put the official figure of the death toll at 131.Vanguard gathered that the police team which had already swung into action, would in the course of the investigation, drill Prophet Joshua extensively, on the issue of a low-flying aeroplane which he alleged, had hovered severally around the building before its collapse. Continue..

The police would further interrogate him on the structural condition of the building before it was raised from a two-storey structure to a six-storey edifice; having held preliminary discussions with the Founder as well as collected all the data (both pictorial and material), needed for a thorough job.Based on this development, sources said detectives would also officially interrogate Prophet Josuah with a view to determining the actual cause of the tragedy.According to the sources, “the detectives would drill Prophet Joshua extensively, on the issue of a low-flying aeroplane alleged to have circled severally around the building before its collapse. They will further interrogate him on the structural condition of the building before it was raised from a two-storey building to a six-storey edifice.”Other vital issues which the detectives vowed to investigate, according to sources, include: whether the church management cleared with Lagos State Physical and Structural Development department before raising the structure; the role played by officials of the department before and during the elevation of the structure; whether the officials who were supposed to have detected the attempt to raise the structure were compromised or not; why they failed to stop work on the structure from the start and if at all, other buildings inside the premises of the church followed the laid down rules before they were erected.Furthermore, the police team will probe the status of foreigners that throng the church in their numbers with a view to ascertaining whether they were officially cleared by the relevant departments before entering the country or not, their official status and duration of stay in the church and actions taken by the church to keep accurate record of events in the church.Sources said also that pathologists working on bodies of the victims had been directed to delve into their health status with a view to finding out if any of them had communicable diseases like the dreaded Ebola before the disaster.One of the sources intimated Vanguard that so far, they were appalled to discover that such large number of worshippers were allowed access into the structure which was still under construction before it collapsed. The source said these are some of the questions they are eagerly waiting for Prophet Josuah to provide answers to.The source further said: “Certainly, nobody is above the laws of the land; we have stern instructions from our boss to carry out thorough investigations into the tragedy especially, with the large number of foreign casualties recorded.The thinking in security circles is that efforts should be made to ascertain the extent of security breaches in the church which had been witnessing an influx of foreigners from far and wide.We will use it as a parameter to checkmate other such places of worship where foreigners especially rush to with a view to knowing the activities of both the church leadership and their followers.I assure you that all these issues including that of the low-flying plane that allegedly hovered around the church before the building collapsed would be blown open in no distant time and the police is serious about this.”Meanwhile, as the emergency rescue operation wound up on the collapsed Guest House at the SCOAN, officials of NEMA, have said that no fewer than 131 people perished in the disater.Meanwhile, a South African minister, Jeff Radebe said yesterday that a five-step process of identification on the bodies of the South Africans killed in the building collapse has commenced.Updating reporters in Pretoria on the situation, the minister said this was a “methodical and time consuming process, and one would not be able to predict the exact time-frames for completion.”Radebe said 62 of the 84 South Africans killed in the disaster had been identified “with certainty.”“On the issue of the bodies, right now, the team that is there in Lagos has been able to identify with certainty 62 South Africans. As you know there are 115 deceased in this tragedy, and 84 of the 115 are South Africans, so we still have a long time to go,” he said, adding that he meant not long in terms of time, but in effort.According to him, “government was committed to ensuring that all those killed were accurately identified, and their bodies brought home. We want to assure the South African nation that we shall spare neither strength nor effort in ensuring that the deceased are repatriated back home.“We believe that the repatriation of the deceased is the crucial first step in helping the families find closure in the aftermath of this terrible tragedy.”Radebe, who heads an inter-ministerial team tasked by President Jacob Zuma to manage the situation, said identification of bodies following a disaster was a specialised scientific process, involving painstakingly thorough procedures.He added that “a South African team of experts on the ground in Nigeria is working closely with their Nigerian counterparts to ensure that this process is completed as soon as possible. The process involved either identification of bodies by next of kin, through photo identification, from fingerprints, from dental records, or – if all these were not possible – through DNA.“Our government appeals to the families and the nation to bear with us as we allow our team in Lagos the necessary time to complete this process. All efforts were being made to keep the identification process as short as possible.”Radebe also said that it was not yet time to discuss the issue of granting visa to TB Joshua to come to South Africa.He was responding to a question on what government planned to do about a call to deny Joshua permission to enter the country.“Our main pre-occupation at the moment, as government, is to bring back the mortal remains of 84 citizens to South Africa. That issue (of a visa) will be entertained at a later stage,” he said.The ANC Youth League on Tuesday called on government not to issue Joshua a visa.“TB Joshua should not be allowed to come to South Africa until we know what happened to our fellow countrymen at his church,” spokesperson, Bandile Masuku said in a statement at the time -