Synagogue building collapse: Court fixes date for trial of contractors, engineers

A Lagos High Court in Ikeja has fixed January 19, 2017 for the continuation of the trial of the contractors and engineers involved in the construction of a guest house belonging to Synagogue Church of All Nations, which collapsed on September 12, 2014, killing 116 persons.
The Lagos State Government is prosecuting the SCOAN Trustees; two engineers – Messrs Oladele Ogundeji and Akinbela Fatiregun; and their companies – Hardrock Construction and Engineering Company and Jandy Trust Limited, before Justice Lateef Lawal-Akapo on 111-count charge for their involvement in the collapsed building.
The defendants were last month arraigned on 111-count charge bordering on criminal negligence, manslaughter and failure to obtain building permit.
During his testimony at the last adjourned date, the Lagos State Chief Medical Examiner, Prof. John Obafunwa, told the court that five dead bodies, who fell victim of the incident, were still yet to be identified.
Led in evidence by Idowu Alakija, the State’s Director of Public Prosecution, Obafunwa, who is a Consultant Pathologist to the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital and the former Vice-Chancellor of the Lagos State University, said the victims of the collapsed building died due to multiple injuries, traumatic asphyxia, severe blood loss, severe fracture and compression of the skull with the brain tissue, congested heart failure against the background of hypertension and accumulation of blood in the chest cavity.
The Chief Medical Examiner said: “To avoid any decomposition, we had to embalm the bodies in the various mortuaries and were equally given identification numbers.
“On the 22nd of September 2014, I received a Coroners’ order to commence a post-mortem examination for identification purposes.
“The bodies were finger printed, examined externally, opened up and examined internally, and samples were taken from various organs to examine them under the microscope.
“We took samples of bones, muscles, pulled hair where available for the purposes of DNA analysis and those samples were sent to a laboratory in South Africa about middle of October, 2014.
“We also collected DNA samples from the relations of the deceased victims and the whole idea was to identify the cause of the death of the affected victims and in the process we were able to identify 110 victims from the 116 that died apart from the one that died after 10 days he was admitted at LASUTH.”
Obafunwa also said all the dead bodies were issued a death certificate each after identification and that the immediate cause of their death was indicated therein.