Ebute-Metta residents quarrel with LASBCA officials for marking their “shaky” building for demolition
By Olabisi Yakub
This is you in 2015. You live on a street where a 10-year-old building collapsed in 2013 claiming eight precious lives, including a nine-day-old baby and its mother.
You live in a house allegedly constructed by the same estate developer who built the house that collapsed two years earlier, and three other houses on the same street – all of them already adjudged uninhabitable.
The July 11, 2013 tragedy remains fresh in your memory because you live in a compound that borders the collapsed building, and you knew all the people who died in that unfortunate incident…in person.
What would you do if the government, based on the result of a stress test, told you the house you live in could collapse any moment?
No, you wouldn’t evacuate. You wouldn’t even consider relocation if you lived at 30, Oloto Street, Ebute-Metta, Lagos.
You would man-up and pick a quarrel with the officials who just marked your house for demolition.
After a building located at 29, Oloto Street, partially collapsed on Wednesday, officials of the Lagos State Building Control Agency (LASBCA) gave a 48-hour ultimatum to the residents at Number 30.
Their building had failed a stress test, and they had to evacuate the structure for safety’s sake.
“We are waiting for the ultimatum,” a resident of the house angrily dared officials who were themselves angered by the response.
“We shall see,” one of them replied the resident.
“But you are not the oga (the boss)…oga said you should leave us alone,” the resident said.
“We are telling them to leave for their own safety,” an official told Newsroom.
Before the officials started demolishing the building that collapsed beside the house, they warned residents at Number 30 to leave their apartments as a precaution.
The warning fell on deaf ears.
“None of them should be inside that building even as we are demolishing this one. Anything can happen. But as you can see, they don’t seem to be bothered.”
One cannot just hope that what is to be seen is not another building implosion, residents of nearby houses told Newsroom.
“The government must act because if that building collapses and people die, no one will blame the victims,” one of them said.
“Everyone will blame the government,” he said.
The structure that collapsed on Wednesday was marked for demolition two years ago after another structure behind it imploded, killing eight people.
“We have done our test and passed the house unfit to stand,” another official said.
“We have marked the house as a testimony against them so no one will accuse us of not doing our job.”
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