Government Begins Demolition Of 180 Houses in Lagos after the Collapse of a three-story

Residents of Lagos Island might still be mourning following the collapse on a three-story building at Massey Street, Ita Faaji, Lagos Island which left 12 people including nine children dead.

However, they have something else to worry about.

They were thrown into a dilemma in the early hours of Friday, March 15, as the state government began a suspended demolition exercise.

The exercise will span 180 defective buildings according to the General Manager of the Lagos State Building Control Agency (LASBCA), Lekan Shodeinde.

With onlookers’ standing by, officials of LASBCA, who had arrived the community with the plan of demolishing 20 buildings on their first day of work went on to bring down the first building, a three-story structure located at 60A Freeman Street, Epetedo.

They proceeded to pull down two other houses but failed to meet their target of 20 on the first day of the demolition exercise.

At a time when the spirits of residents are low and plan to accommodate the owners of the building earmarked for demolition unknown, there have been raised eyebrows, as question such as why the government had to wait for the calamity to happen before taking action.

There are also those who have questioned the effectiveness of the state’s Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development in areas of structural approval and building permits.

Speaking on the collapsed building when he visited the area after the collapse, Governor Akinwunmi Ambode; said some landlords had been resisting the demolition of defective buildings.

According to him, “We have been carrying out a lot of integrity tests on the buildings in this neighborhood and as you can see, some of them have been marked for demolition but we get resistance from landlords but we must continue to save lives and we would intensify our efforts to see that those that have failed our integrity test, we would ensure that they are quickly evacuated and we bring the structures down,” he had said.

Interestingly, there those who have asked if the government would have commenced the demolition exercise had the Ita Faaji calamity not happened.

source:Independent