Tragedy struck in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State on December 10, when a church building collapsed on worshippers and killed scores of them. Among the worshippers were Governor Udom Emmanuel, who also came within a whisker of being killed. An eight-member Commission of Enquiry has been empanelled by the state government to identify persons or institutions culpable for this incident. The panel should not toy with the task, nor should the government joke with its report.
The event was the consecration of the pastor of Reigners Bible Church International, Akan Weeks, as a bishop. But this was not consummated following the tragedy. Weeks, who is among the 186 persons bed-ridden in 10 hospitals in the state, now says he has given up the idea. “I am so sorry and sympathise with all the families. Please, we should rise and pray. We will win the battle,” he said from the hospital.
Going by media reports, the church was still under construction and some aspects of the work hurried up for the ill-fated canonisation. Why the disaster happened is a question the Uyo Capital City Development Authority has to face squarely. A media report alleged that the agency had since 2013 been battling the church authorities over due process matters: submission of building plan, structural design and environmental impact assessment report of the project for evaluation and approval.
If these were not done and erection of the structure commenced, then there is enough blame to go round, possibly even criminal negligence. A government agency should not allow any individual, group or authority to cow it, or undermine it in the discharge of its official assignment, especially when public safety is involved. The panel set up to unravel the circumstances that led to the collapse, therefore, should establish the veracity of a media report that a “stop work” order was pasted at the church as far back as 2013.
The simple truth is, where such a disaster occurs, it epitomises the failure of governance, laxity or compromise in the enforcement of regulations. This malady is evident everywhere in our cities, driven by corruption, plain incompetence and indifference of government officials. Once a safety order is issued, a municipal authority should be able to follow it through; not doing so is criminal, given its fatal consequences.
Two actors in this calamity have been trading blame: the roofing contractor, – Idorenyin White – and the site engineer or supervisor – Anieti Augustine. According to media accounts, White said the anomaly he had noticed and reported to the construction committee was ignored. He had warned that the scaffold inside the church should not be removed, a point stressed by engineers allegedly brought from outside to observe the structure. The side beam was not fully cast, just as the beam in the middle was small, he said, in his attempt to portray the problem as a civil engineering matter. But Augustine disagrees, insisting that the problem came from the roof.
Between these two contradicting impulses lies the fact of the matter. However, engineering practitioners are unanimous: something is amiss. One of them, Itoro Timothy, who visited the scene, said, “I discovered that all the irons used as beams or rafters for the roofing were not supported at all by any supporting pillars except the ones on the side of the building.”
It is not just the Akwa Ibom State Government that should learn from this calamity, but other states as well. Religious buildings, just like other structures, spring up in our cities without planning or approval by relevant authorities. The collapse of a church building on the congregation is without question, a “weapon of mass destruction” of a kind. As a result, every step should be taken to avoid it. Those who claim to be “men of God” should be embodiment of discipline, rule of law and order. Town planning authorities across the federation should wake up. There is the overarching need to carry out integrity audits of such buildings wherever they exist.
The Reigners’ misfortune came two years after a guest house belonging to a Lagos-based church – Synagogue Church of All Nations – collapsed and left 116 persons dead, 67 of them religious tourists from South Africa. But the Lagos State Government is determined to bring those culpable to book with the ongoing court trial. The first prosecution witness, Olusegun Oyenuga, had told an Ikeja High Court during the hearing in June this year that the six-storey building had no supervising structural engineer.
Akwa Ibom State, it is hoped, will emulate the Lagos State example. The visit of the Nigerian Society of Engineers to the scene of the Uyo church accident is laudable, as it will help to establish whether practising engineers were involved in the construction and at what level. Gory incidents such as this serve as a quick reminder to all the stakeholders on the need for the National Assembly to pass the National Building Code Bill without further delay in order to arrest the bedlam in the building industry.
