Several students were killed in central Nigeria on Friday when a school building collapsed as they were attending classes, according to the country’s emergency services.
Footage broadcast on Nigerian television showed rescue workers and ambulances evacuating the injured, as dozens of bystanders and students sifted through the rubble of the school, called Saint’s Academy, in the city of Jos. The two-story building looked as though it had been sheared in half, with one part still standing and the other, including the large corrugated iron roof, collapsed on the ground.
Heavy rains pounded Jos over the last few days, and more thunderstorms and downfalls are expected in the coming week.
A post shared on a Facebook page affiliated with the school said that the building had collapsed with “many of our students trapped” inside, and added that the number of casualties had yet to be ascertained.
Eugene Nyelon, an official with the National Emergency Management Agency, said on Friday afternoon that injured and dead students had been taken to three nearby hospitals.He declined to provide an exact death toll or to say whether teachers or other adults had been trapped in the rubble, saying that the rescue operation was ongoing.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, has the highest number of building collapses on the continent, Farouk Salim, director general of the country’s public regulatory agency, acknowledged last year. More than 220 buildings were recorded to have collapsed over the past four decades, according to Mr. Salim, with 60 percent of such incidents occurring in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city.
The real figures might be higher still. More than 600 buildings have collapsed over the last 40 years, according to a report released this month by the Building Collapse Prevention Guild, an advocacy group promoting safer construction practices in Nigeria. As of July 7, 22 buildings already had collapsed this year, the guild said.
The use of low-quality building material, poor or no soil testing upon construction, and lax supervision and maintenance often contribute to the collapses, the guild and other building experts say, and those poor practices can be compounded by harsh weather.
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