UPDATED: Death toll in Plateau school collapse hits 21, scores injured

A Red Cross spokesperson, Nuruddeen Hussain Magaji, on Friday night, said no fewer than 21 pupils have died in the school building collapse that occurred in Plateau State.

Magaji said there were “21 fatalities and 69 injuries all in admission at various hospitals,” all victims in the building collapse that occurred at the Saints Academy, a secondary school in Jos.

The Guardian reports that the collapse occurred while students were writing their third term examination.

Earlier AFP had reported no fewer than 16 students were killed in the incident. The trapped students, the news agency added, were heard crying for help under the rubble.

Mechanical diggers tried to rescue the victims while parents desperately looked for their children.

Officials have so far only said “several students” were killed but an AFP reporter saw five dead bodies in one hospital morgue and 11 in another. All were wearing school uniforms.

With his mother at his hospital bedside, injured student Wulliya Ibrahim told AFP: “I entered the class not more than five minutes when I heard a sound, and the next thing is I found myself here.”

“We are many in the class, we are writing our exams,” he said.

The National Emergency Management Agency said the two-storey building housing Saint Academy collapsed killing “several students” without giving details.

“NEMA and other critical stakeholders are presently carrying out Search and Rescue operations,” it said.

A resident at the scene Chika Obioha told AFP he saw at least eight bodies at the site and that dozens more had been injured.

“Everyone is helping out to see if we can rescue more people,” he said.

The AFP correspondent said he saw 11 bodies in the morgue at the Bingham University Teaching Hospital and five dead taken into the mortuary at the Our Lady of Apostles Hospital in Jos.

At least 15 rescued and injured students were admitted, officials at the Our Lady of Apostles Hospital said.

Officials at the Bingham University Teaching Hospital did not comment.

It was not immediately clear what caused the collapse but residents said it came after three days of heavy rains in Plateau.

Meanwhile, the Plateau Commissioner for Information and Communication, Mr Musa Ashoms, confirmed that about 200 students were trapped in the school building, according to The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

Ashoms, who visited the scene in the company of other commissioners, including that of secondary education, said that the school had a total population of about 400.

The commissioner said that part of the school that collapsed was accommodating about 200 students.

”The collapsed building has resulted in casualties, and injured students are still being evacuated to hospitals.

”We cannot, however, ascertain the exact number of casualties until the evacuation is completed

“The emergency workers are doing a lot in the rescue efforts.

“The Governor, Caleb Mutfwang, has urged the medical personnel in the hospitals to ensure that they save the lives of survivors.

“They should not ask for money or anything because this is an emergency situation,” he said.

The commissioner, however, said that the incident had underscored the imperative of order 003 of the state government, which was meant to enforce the implementation of the Greater Jos Master Plan, to prevent such unfortunate incidences.

According to him, the collapsed school building, built on a waterlogged area, clearly did not meet construction standards.

Ashoms said that the Jos Metropolitan Development Board (JMDB) would ensure that faulty buildings were brought down, while ongoing constructions would henceforth conform to standards.

According to the AFP, Building collapses are fairly common in Africa’s most populous nation because of lax enforcement of building standards, negligence and use of low-quality materials.

At least 45 people were killed in 2021 when a high-rise building under construction collapsed in the upscale Ikoyi district in Nigeria’s economic capital Lagos.

Ten people were killed when a three-storey building collapsed in the Ebute-Metta area of Lagos the year after.

Since 2005, at least 152 buildings have collapsed in Lagos, according to a South African university researcher investigating construction disasters.

Bad workmanship, low-quality materials and corruption to bypass official oversight are often blamed for Nigerian building disasters.

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