As is commonplace in Nigeria, we have again witnessed another avoidable tragedy that has claimed lives – including children and left many heavy -hearted. Ita Faji was not the first of its kind, whether in Lagos or in Nigeria, or the first where children are losing their lives. In fact, one could easily read a news item from one of the earlier collapses and it will fit right into the story of Ita Faji.
Lagos, particularly, has become a hub for collapsed buildings. Between February and August alone last year, the state witnessed more than five building collapses, each with lives lost. Only less than a year ago, in Oke-Arin area of Lagos Island and Olushi Street, Lagos Island, a three-storey and two-storey building respectively, collapsed. Word as not been heard on the resulting consequence or clamp down by the law on the perpetrators. The Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing has it that over fifty-four cases of collapsed buildings were recorded in 2017 across the country.
There is a long list of collapsed buildings in which the perpetrators have not been brought to book. The 2014 building collapse of the Synagogue Church of All Nations building at Ikotun has quickly become a forgotten issue, a tragedy that claimed over 100 lives. With a long-drawn case ongoing in court against the culprits, no one knows how soon -or if ever at all- justice will be in sight. The Lekki Gardens building collapse of 2016 also claimed at least 30 lives including a woman, her husband and their 6-month old baby. Ebutte Metta happened in 2006; block of 36 flats housing about 180 people, after one had happened in the same vicinity in July 2013, killing a pregnant woman, a nursing mother, a one-year old baby, amongst others.
In each case, the message from the State Government has remained the same. The building was marked for demolition, yet it was still standing with inhabitants living and working there. That sounds something like a teenager crying to his mother that his three-year old sibling threw him a blow. A classic case of absolving responsibility; proof that the government has failed and continues to fail at its duty.
If repeatedly, people can re-enter buildings that have been marked or sealed for demolition and continue to brazenly live there and do business there,even when the result of such lifestyle has resulted in building collapses in the not-too distant past, then it is a statement to the world that we have a culture of ‘no consequence’, where nothing happens because of the singular fact that ‘this is Nigeria.’
We have little by little bred a culture where the culprit eventually walks free; where the only thing the government, clueless as it is, gives is what it knows how best to – condolences. If we did not have culture of ‘no consequence’, Ita Faji could have been avoided.
For a building that showed clear marks of sag and structural defect and had been marked for demolition to be repainted and still standing, someone’s hand was greased, someone had done the greasing, and someone had turned a blind eye, caring less about the hundreds of lives the building housed, people who are supposed to believe in the power of the state to keep them safe. I say categorically that the Nigerian State is an expert at killing its own; adult and children alike. This impunity must stop, this lawlessness must give way; this culture of no consequence must come to an end.
Caleb Adebayo, Lagos.
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