Synagogue church collapse: We could have carried out better investigation --- BCPG

(Nigeria) The Building Collapse Prevention Guild, has said that  it could have carried out better investigation on the collapse of the guest house within the Synagogue Church of All Nations, SCOAN, if its members had visited the scene earlier.

Mr Oreoluwa Fadayomi, a member of the Guild made this known on Thursday while testifying before the coroner's inquest investigating the cause of the collapse of the six-storey building.

The inquest was set up by the Lagos State Government to investigate the September 12, 2014 building collapse, which killed 116 people, mainly South Africans.

The witness, under cross-examination by SCOAN's counsel, Mr Olalekan Ojo, told the court that the Guild was a voluntary association of professional engineers.

According to him, the BCPG team visited the scene on March 5, about six months after the incident.

He said: "If I had visited the scene earlier than the time I did, I would have had a better material to carry out a better investigation into the incident. As at the time I got to the scene of the failed structure, the members of the collapsed building were already disjointed."

The witness, who is the Deputy President of the Nigerian Institute of Engineers, however maintained that the BCPG report was based on the analysis carried out on the collapsed scene.

Fadayomi told the inquest presided over by Mr Oyetade Komolafe that the collapse was caused by a combination of design and detailing errors on the part of engineers who handled the project.

He said that the designer of any building should be responsible for ensuring that the pad footings were not undersized.

"What we saw on ground was enough to determine the causes of failure.  All the ingredients for a sudden collapse were present in this structure before the collapse," the witness said.

The matter was adjourned till April 24 for further hearing.