14th April, 2023
One body has been recovered from the rubble of the collapsed seven-storey building at 1st Avenue, Banana Island, Ikoyi, Lagos.
The building, under construction caved in on Wednesday, with some people trapped in the debris.
On Thursday, the Lagos State Government said 25 people were rescued from the ruins of the collapse and that nobody died.
But on Friday, the government said one person had been recovered from the building dead.
Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Gbenga Omotoso, in a statement, said the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency (LASEMA) workers’ search and recovery efforts unearthed the remains of the adult male hitherto unaccounted for by site supervisors.
“The excavation of the site, using the architectural designs, continues. The site has been divided into quadrants for a painstaking search and rescue operation. Quadrants 2 and 3 have been levelled to ground zero, with the search operation completed. Quadrant 4 is ongoing.
“Twenty-five people were rescued from the site when the building went down on Wednesday. They are all doing fine.
“When a roll call was conducted by the site supervisors, everyone was accounted for. Nobody could ascertain whether the victim, whose body was found this morning, was on the site – as of the time the roll call was taken,” Omotoso said.