By Kingsley U. N Chikwendu
Authorities in northern Nigeria, Kano state to be precise said on Tuesday that it has rescued ten persons that were trapped in a collapsed building at Gwammaja, ‘Yan Kosai Dala Local Government Area of the state. Spokesperson for the state Fire Service, Saidu Muhammed said in a statement that it received a “distress call” from a resident where the incident occured.
“On receiving the distress call at about 1:30a.m on Tuesday from one Malam Abdullahi Muhammad, we quickly sent our rescue team to the scene at about 1:37 a.m.
“We discovered that the house which is a one-storey building had collapsed on 10 dwellers and were covered by broken blocks and sand.
Eight out of ten in the building were rescued alive and taken to the hospital, while two were confirmed dead on arrival to the hospital.
Building collapse has been a reoccurring problem in Nigeria. On the 8th of March 2016, a five-story building under construction collapsed at Lekki in Lagos state. At least, 34 persons were killed while thirteen others were rescued.
Figures obtained from the Building Collapse Prevention Guild, an advocacy group of built environment professionals, showed that the country recorded 43 building collapse cases in 2019 with Lagos having the highest figure of 17 cases, accounting for almost 39.53 per cent of the total number.
