(Jos) After her morning class, 16-year-old Chidera Denis was about to join her classmates for end-of-term exams at her school in Jos, central Nigeria. Moments later, the building collapsed and she was trapped under the rubble.
Like other students sheltering under tables, Chidera was lucky. The collapse of Saint Academy on Friday killed 22 students. Dozens more like her are hospitalized.
His mother, Amaka Denis, has no news of her son who attended the same school.
“I’m still looking for him. I’m in pain,” she said Saturday.
Another survivor, Chidinma Emmanuel, 14, saw a comrade die next to him. “He fell on my arm and it broke it, then debris hit his head and killed him,” he said.
The 22 victims are “all students,” Yohanna Auda, spokesperson for the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), said on Saturday, adding that rescue operations had ended.
PHOTO MUHAMMAD TANKO SHITTU, ARCHIVES AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Rescuers gather at the site of the collapsed school in Jos, July 12, 2024.
The Red Cross said on Saturday on X that a teacher and a student were still missing.
Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu called the tragedy a “huge loss to the nation.”
In the aftermath of the disaster, 58 people remained hospitalized and 74 had been discharged, said Musa Ibrahim Ashoms, spokesman for Plateau state, of which Jos is the capital.
The cause of the tragedy has not been clearly established, but according to residents it happened after three days of heavy rain.
Building collapses are quite common in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country.
Friday’s accident was the deadliest since November 2021, when a tower under construction in Lagos, the economic capital, collapsed, killing at least 45 people, most of them construction workers.
Poor construction quality, insufficient controls and the corruption of officials to circumvent these controls are often blamed for these incidents.
Although investigations have yet to begin, Plateau State authorities have already announced plans to tighten building standards.
PHOTO MUHAMMAD TANKO SHITTU, ARCHIVES AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
The day after the disaster, 58 people were still hospitalized and 74 had been discharged.
Governor Caleb Muftwang “stresses the need for all developers and landowners to submit their building plans to the Jos Metropolitan Development Board [JMDB] for verification and validation,” his spokesperson said.
The Saint Academy tragedy is the latest to hit Plateau State, which has recently seen a series of deadly inter-communal clashes.
Gunmen killed 40 people in Zurak, a mining village 259 km east of Jos, in May.
Nearly 200 people were also killed in the state last December in raids on predominantly Christian villages.