The National Executive Co-ordinator of Life Savers Foundation, a non-governmental organisation, Mrs. Fola Shoetan, has described as unsatisfactory the performance of the National Emergency Management Agency and the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency during the Synagogue Church Of All Nation’s building collapse. Continue..
She said the two government agencieslacked equipment and that their officials lacked adequate training.
Shoetan accused the officials of closing daily at 10.30pm and resuming at 9am “even when it was obvious that there were several dying victims still trapped under the rubbles”.
She described as insincere the claim by the General Manager of LASEMA, Dr. Femi Oke-Osanyintolu, that officials of the agency were on ground 24 hours spearheading the rescue operations.
Shoetan also said that the government statutory responders to emergencies came ill-equipped for the task and were completely clueless about how to approach the operation based on its magnitude.
The school teacher testified on Tuesday at the coroner’s inquest into the death of about 116 persons killed in the Synagogue’s six-storey guest house.
She said, “I don’t know when NEMA officials left the scene on the first day, but LASEMA officials left at 10:30pm on the second day. As at the time LASEMA officials left on the second day, persons were still trapped under the rubbles.”
“The LASEMA General Manager, Dr. Femi Osanyintola, even though he was very hard working and was always around at the collapsed building site, but what he did most of the time that he was around was to hold meetings with his team from the state.
“Each time they were closing at 10.30pm, I will ask them, “Are you going?”
“I did not sleep for five days; I only took my bath on the third day because there was no one that had human feelings that would be able to leave the site when he was hearing people crying for help from under the rubbles.”
The witness urged the government to provide training and equipment for the emergency management agencies, saying they were not better equipped than her own NGO. She also lamented that no rescue effort could be made until the heavy duty equipment borrowed from a Chinese construction company arrived.
She also noted that the government agencies brought only one ambulance, while SCOAN provided at least five ambulances.
Earlier in his own testimony, the Chief Security Officer of SCOAN, Mr. Sunday Okogie, had opposed the claim by both the NEMA and LASEMA that their officials were denied prompt access to the site of the collapsed building.
Okogie, who submitted to the court unedited footages from the CCTV, which captured the incident from September 12 to 16, argued that the recordings contradicted the claims by NEMA and LASEMA.
He pointed out that both agencies arrived at the church about an hour after the building had collapsed and gained access to the scene in less than a minute.
Presenting the footages to the coroner, he said, “My Lord, on the first day of the incident, as you can see, nobody prevented them from entering into the compound. But as you can see from the video, LASEMA came with only one bus and no heavy duty equipment as they claimed before this court.
“The same thing with NEMA; they came ill-equipped for the job of digging out those who were trapped under the rubbles.”
Okogie further told the court that officials of NEMA and LASEMA left the site at about 5.45pm, with the full knowledge that several persons were still trapped underneath the rubbles.
“For the first three days, that was how they were operating. They will resume at about 8am and leave in the evening like they were on duty in the office,” he told the coroner.
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