Thursday, July 12, 2013 was Kafila
Oyeniyi’s birthday. She did not celebrate much, just an intimate period
with her husband, Atanda, who had promised her a surprise package later
that week.
As they slept in their apartment at 29,
Oloto Street, Ebute Meta, Lagos that night, Atanda told his wife of
seven years that by her next birthday, things would be better and they
would celebrate it with more fun.
But that birthday was Kafila’s day of death.
She and her one-year-old son were among the seven people who died when their three-storey-building collapsed.
Kafila was a teacher, who lived in one of the apartments on the first floor of the building.
“ A few hours after we finished our
conversation, said our prayers and lay on the bed to sleep, a sudden
noise woke me up. My six-year-old daughter and three-year-old son were
sleeping in the living room while our one-year-old son slept between my
wife and I in the bedroom,” Atanda said.
Forty-year-old Atanda, also a teacher,
said he was roused from sleep by a loud noise and the voices of people,
who turned out to be his neighbours.
He said, “I woke up and heard people calling my name. The neighbours were shouting, asking us to hurry and come out.
“It took me a moment to make out what
they were saying. I heard something about the house about to collapse. I
acted swiftly and woke my wife up. I told her to grab our toddler.
“I woke my other two children up, but
they were not quite awake yet. But I grabbed them and carried them, one
on each arm and we made for the door.”
If Atanda did not act swiftly, the house would probably have collapsed on them as they slept in their bed.
But as he led his family towards the
door, praying with all his might, shouting “La Ilaha illa Allah, La
Ilaha illa Allah…” the house came down.
The bereaved man said, “Immediately, I
woke my wife up, she grabbed our little child and strapped him on her
back. I told her too to pray as we tried to escape. She did not panic
unnecessarily. My wife was a woman of faith. I tried to tear the net on
the door. That was when the house collapsed on us. I blacked out
immediately.
“A short moment later, I moved. I was
disoriented; my body did not feel like mine. Everywhere was dark. I just
moved towards an opening in the wall where the door was supposed to be.
I stumbled out, covered in blood.”
At 2am when Atanda made it out alive
covered in blood and dust, all he could do was point to the house and
shout, “My wife, my children, please” as he was rushed to a nearby
hospital.
He was physically restrained by
sympathisers as he tried to re-enter the collapsed building and rescue
his wife and children. They took him to the hospital.
“When I got to the hospital and the
doctor tried to sedate me so I could rest, we got into an argument. I
told him I could not go to sleep while my family was still in the rubble
of our collapsed building.
“He said I could collapse on the way,
but I told him I did not care, that I needed to go back to the scene. I
got there and was shocked to learn that none of my family had been
rescued yet.
“Rescue operation was already on, but
they had not paid attention to the side where my family was yet. I had
to raise the alarm and shout at the people there to help look in the
side of our apartment.”
Raising the alarm worked, but rescue workers could not get to where his family was until six hours later.
At 8am, Atanda’s two oldest children were brought out alive.
An eyewitness told our correspondent that the two children were brought out completely covered in dust and with minor injuries.
A moment later, rescue workers made a tragic discovery, the lifeless bodies of Kafila and her child.
The child was found without any physical injury, but a beam seemed to have crashed on the mother.
The theory was that the little child suffocated in the dust because rescue workers could not get to them on time.
Atanda looked depressed when he spoke
with our correspondent on Tuesday. He spoke calmly, looking towards the
rubble that claimed his wife and child, as if they would walk out at
moment. There were bruises on his hand, head and legs.
He had summoned the courage to go to the
site of the collapsed building and sift through the rubbles of his
former home to salvage whatever he could.
“I have nothing at all, safe for what I
am wearing now. I am currently living with a family friend, who has been
very good to me. I know things will be alright but I am helpless at the
moment,” he said.
The site of the collapse continues to
play host to a myriad of people – victims, who have come to search for
their belongings; scavengers, who have come to hunt for scrap metals and
victims’ belongings.
Some of the victims spoke with our correspondent on their close shave with death.
With a heavy dressing on a wound on his head, one of them told Saturday PUNCH that his kindness would have led to his death.
He said, “I woke up around 2am and heard
a sound. I looked out of my window and realised my window had fallen
off. I knew what was happening right away. I woke my family up hurriedly
and we made it downstairs from our first floor apartment.
“When I got downstairs, I realised those
in the last two floors did not know what was happening. I was about
climbing the staircase to go and warn them when the building collapsed. A
beam fell on my head but I was lucky to be alive and crawled out.”
Another victim, Adebayo Ayodeji, who
made it out of the building with his pregnant wife alive, was full of
praises to God when he spoke with our correspondent.
Ayodeji told Saturday PUNCH, “We
were on the first floor of the building and rushed out immediately we
heard a sound. Most of those who were trapped in the building were those
on the second and third floor.
“Even though we lost everything we had
in the collapse, I thank God that all members of my family are accounted
for. Immediately we realised the house was about to collapse that
night, I carried my children and we ran out.”
Residents said the landlord of the
collapsed building ran away very early on the morning of the incident
and had not been seen since then.
Many three-storey buildings have been
marked as distressed by the Lagos State Building Control Agency since
the incident, prompting speculations of impending demolitions.
But the General Manager of the state
emergency agency, Mr. Femi Oke-Osanyintolu, said the marks on the
buildings did not necessarily mean the buildings were up for demolition.
He said, “This government is not about
demolition all the time. We are just being proactive. The idea of
marking them is to notify them that the buildings need to be assessed
for structural integrity.
“In case of those buildings with notices
of evacuation, we only put that there to instruct them to find
alternative accommodation pending the time the buildings will be
certified ok or otherwise.
“If any building is tested and seen to be bad, we make recommendations for restricting. This is not about demolition at all.”
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