New Telegraph

Collapsed building: Lagos demolishes Excel College

Exams will go on, says principal

 

Lagos State Emergency Management Agency (LASEMA) has demolished the second wing of Excel College after the first wing collapsed on Saturday.

 

Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo- Olu, while speaking on the collapsed school building during a press briefing on Covid-19, ordered the demolition of the second wing of the school building to guarantee safety of lives of the residents.

 

After the demolition, the LASEMA Director-General, Dr. Femi Oke-Osanyintolu, said the agency discovered that the second wing of the building was also comprised and failed the structural integrity test. He said: “We responded to distress calls yesterday morning, 18th September, and encountered a threestorey building with one wing entirely collapsed and the second wing visibly compromised.

 

“A joint team of LASEMA and LASBCA has since completed integrity testing on the second wing and results demonstrate that the building is compromised beyond salvage.”

 

Oke-Osanyintolu added that the state Commissioner for Urban Planning and Physical Development, Dr. Idris Salako, upon presentation of the results, also directed that the building be completely levelled to ground zero to forestall any further damage or second  ary incidents.

 

Meanwhile, the management of the school has allayed the fears of disruptions in the scheduled National Examination Council (NECO) examinations for Senior Secondary School (SS3) and Junior Secondary students of the college.

 

The Principal of the school, Lady Kehinde Oke, described the incident as unfortunate but thanked God that no life was lost. She said: “First, we are immensely grateful to Almighty God that no life was lost.

 

Much as it is natural to feel the pain of such a monument loss in infrastructure, we give glory to God because we lost no student, staff or anybody at the end of the day.

 

“We want to assure our parents and students that we have taken the development in good faith and are working hard to mitigate its effects on scheduled resumption of the students, especially the remainder of the SS3 final examinations in the coming weeks.

 

“We are arranging facilities where the students will sit for the examinations. Parents and students have nothing to fear. We shall inform all the relevant authorities of our plans and actions

 

The students are guaranteed the traditional quality environment for the examinations. “Even before the unfortunate incident, we had earlier notified the parents of management’s decision to defer the resumption date for safety reasons because of structural issues with a wing of the building.

 

The engineers had asked for the extension to properly evaluate and ascertain what the issue was. While taking caution and closing the wing for activities, we never knew it could result into a building collapse.”

 

Oke expressed the gratitude of school management to the Lagos State government for the prompt response to the emergency

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