LAGOS – Twenty people were killed in Wednesday’s collapse of a four-story building containing a primary school in Nigeria’s commercial capital Lagos and 45 others survived, the state health commissioner said on Friday.
Commissioner Jide Idris gave no details of how many children were among the dead but he said 10 children and four adults were still receiving medical help.
Building collapses are frequent in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, where regulations are poorly enforced and construction materials are often substandard.
Lagos, Nigeria’s most populous city with around 23 million inhabitants is particularly densely populated in poorer areas where multiple families occupy small spaces to save money on rent.
“Twenty corpses were brought to Lagos state mortuaries from the site, 45 survivors were received and were managed by government health facilities,” Idris said in a statement.
Residents had said the school alone had around 100 pupils, although that figure was questioned by emergency officials. It was not clear how many children were in the building when the building collapsed. (Reuters)
