Followers of one of Nigeria’s most popular preachers
attacked emergency service workers, preventing them from accessing the site of
a deadly building collapse, an inquest was told on Wednesday.
“The first three days (after the collapse) were marred by
the so-called church sympathisers and the crowd,” said the head of the Lagos
State Emergency Management Agency, Femi Oke-Osanyintolu.
“By the time we attained momentum after 96 hours a lot of
things had gone bad.”
A total of 116 people, 84 of them South Africans, were
killed when a guesthouse for foreign followers of TB Joshua’s Synagogue Church
of All Nations (SCOAN) collapsed in Lagos on September 12.
Joshua, known to his congregation as “The Prophet” and “The
Man of God”, was scheduled to give evidence at the coroner’s inquest into the
tragedy.
But the self-styled miracle worker, who claims that he can see
the future, was not in court, despite the coroner having warned that he faced
arrest if he did not appear.
Osanyintolu told the hearing that it was only after the
intervention of the Lagos State governor that rescue workers could get to the
stricken building on the sprawling SCOAN compound.
The LASEMA general manager said there was “no effective
crowd control” in the aftermath of the collapse, which engineers have blamed on
the addition of extra floors to the guesthouse.
“The crowd impeded our operation. They did not allow our
personnel and equipment to come in. They frustrated the emergency workers at
the scene,” he added.
Instead of allowing trained rescue workers with specialist
equipment to search for survivors, only church members and volunteers were
allowed to pick through the rubble, he said.
“There were restrictions of emergency responders to the
scene of the collapse. On the first day, we were assaulted, especially my
humble self,” he continued.
“We were not allowed to do documentation. Photographs of the
incident were not allowed.
“We asked for the manifest to know the number and identities
of the people in the building, we were not given. We asked for the building
plan, we were not given.”
Expert witnesses at the hearing have previously ruled out
sabotage from a low-flying aircraft or an explosion, as suggested by Joshua and
SCOAN members.
Osanyintolu, a medical doctor, also rejected the theory: “On
observation, bodies were not mutilated. They were not disjointed… the bodies
were not burned.”
The court has heard that the guesthouse did not have
planning permission and that other structures on the site, including the
church’s main auditorium, were structurally defective.
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