Twenty four hours after the building of Saint Academy School in Busa Buji area of Jos North came down, some school children are still missing.
The government had demolished the remains of the building few hours after the incident
One of the parents, Mrs. Amaka Dennis, told our correspondent at the Our Lady of Apostles Hospital (OLA) where her second child, Chidera Dennis, is recuperating from injuries she sustained during the incident that she’s still searching for her JSS 1 son, Emmanuel, who went to school that day with his sister.
The distraught mother, amidst sobs, said that he and her husband had combed the whole hospitals and mortuaries in Jos without any sign of Emmanuel dead or alive.
She said that soldiers had barricaded the site and were not allowing parents to go to there after the incident and that she had not been able to gain access to continue the search for her son.
Amaka, who hails from Orlu in Imo State, said, “Please help me tell the soldiers to allow me to go in and look for my son if he’s still under the rubble. My husband and I have gone round all the hospitals and mortuaries in Jos, but we have not seen him. Please help me, help me. I can’t get myself, As you see me i am not the one here. I carried him nine months. He is very diligent. I sell roasted corn and after school, he comes to the market to help me. Let them allow me to dig if I can see my son. I thank God I have seen this one. The God that did miracle for me in this one should help me get my son.
Her daughter, Chidera, an SS2 student, narrating what happened said that they were in the class gisting after a lesson when one of their classmates told them that a teacher wanted to hold a combined lesson with another class with them.
According to her. After a class we just sat in the classroom talking because the teacher just finished teaching and left us. We were just gisting and talking when one of our classmates came and told us that a teacher wants to take us on a combined class with another class. We were about to go out and as I carried my bag, and opened the door the building now fell down and I crept under one desk with one girl. She was telling me that I should help her because the deck is on top of her head. I removed her head and put my hand under the deck. Then she said that I should tell her mother that if they saved us she was going to die. I now told her that she should not say that again that we are going to come out alive. That the Lord is our strength. We were eight inside the class and we lost one of our classmates.”
She said that rescue efforts were delayed as it took time before authorities of the school knew that some students were still alive under the rubble.
Meanwhile Governor Caleb Mutfwang has ordered the closure of Saint Academy school, whose building collapsed on Friday, He also ordered the police to arrest anybody found mining in Jos city centre
Mutfwang, who spoke while inspecting the site of the collapsed building along with the school principal said that the act was caused by negligence as the incident could have been avoided. He said that he was told that the proprietors of the school had enough warning to have taken steps to avoid the incident.
He said, “It’s obvious that this building is defective. There was no proper mixture of sand and cement. What I can see here is pure sand. And so we have endangered the lives of innocent children for no reason tangled. You were not in class. You could have also been a victim by now. We can’t continue like this. When you see something, you say something, you say something. It is not all the time that we spend time praying against demons and Satan. This is human negligence. We don’t need to shy away from this reality. This is human negligence.
“At this rate, we cannot allow this school to function. I hope you know that for the parents who still have children in this school, it’s unfortunate what has happened. But of course, what it means is that this school is closed down immediately. We can’t take any further chances. And we need to send this message, particularly to owners of private schools. The drive for the motive for profit must not overshadow the safety of lives.”
The governor said a proper integrity check and audit will be carried out on all school buildings in the state, both private and public.
“And so we are going to take steps immediately to do a technical audit of all the schools. We are going to test their structural integrity to ensure that they can be able to to human beings can inhabit such buildings. It is very clear that there are buildings that were not supposed to have been built. Some buildings were not built in the right places. Some buildings were built without approvals. Some buildings were built without the right materials. And so we are going to take time to correct these things. I won’t just blame the school. I will also blame our public officials who were supposed to supervise these buildings and didn’t do their job. So by the grace of God, we’re going to set up a very high powered committee to investigate this incident. Yes, we’re going to bring in building professionals to investigate this. And anyone found culpable will certainly face the wrath of the law. We cannot afford this situation any longer at many, many, many schools.
The governor said that the main essence of signing Executive Order 003 was to bring sanity to how buildings were constructed in the state.
He said, “That is why we sign executive order 003 is to be able to bring order and sanity into a built environment. When we insist that some buildings be demolished, it’s not because we are wicked. We are concerned about the safety of lives. That’s why when we see buildings on water lines, we see buildings in marshy places, we have no option than to bring them down. And people think we are wicked. But we are going to go the extra mile now and make sure that violators are also prosecuted. We will not just bring down the buildings at a government cost. We’ll make sure the owners are prosecuted”
The principal of the school told Mutfwang that the school had a student population of 284 in the secondary section and 145 in the primary school.
He said that the proprietor was not around to receive the governor as he was indisposed.
Mutfwang later visited the injured at the Bingham University Teaching Hospital and Our Lady of Apostles (Evangel) Hospital.
Addressing newsmen after the visit, the governor said that 22 students lost their their lives, while 134 others received varying degrees of injuries. He said that the government will foot the bills of all those in the hospital and commiserate with all those who lost their loved ones.
