Lagos: Two bodies were pulled out early Wednesday from the debris of the Lagos tall building that collapsed, bringing the death toll to 22 people, emergency services said.
The 21-storey building was still under construction when it was destroyed on Monday in the upper class of Ikoyi in the commercial capital of Nigeria.
Rescuer said on Wednesday they had restored 22 bodies so far and saved nine survivors, but construction workers were afraid dozens of their colleagues trapped in it.
“We restored two male bodies this morning, bringing toll 22,” Ibrahim Farinloye from the National Emergency Management Agency told AFP.
The number of victims was still standing in nine, he said, adding that the search and rescue operation was still active.
Hope to find more victims seems to be dim because of rescue operations entering the third day on Wednesday.
“We will not give up until we reach Ground Zero,” Farinloye said, adding that larger equipment was taken on Tuesday night for surgery.
He previously said rescue workers had communicated with other victims who were still trapped under a destroyed building.
Confavor to confrees and friends from the victims have surrounded the scene since Monday, looking for information about their fate.
Two other small buildings in Lagos also collapsed on Tuesday after heavy rains in the densely populated city the day before, even though no one was killed, he said.
The building collapsed tragically in general in Lagos and in all the most populous countries in Africa where ingredients below standard, negligence and lack of construction standard enforcement is the main problem.
The Lagos state police said it was too early to determine why the Ikoyi building collapsed, but the manager of the Emergency Management Agency Lagos Femi Okyintolu said the violation had been carried out in its construction.
“We will arrive at its roots to prevent recurrence,” he told AFP.
About 20 spectators, including the family coals and friends from the victims were on the Rednesay Morning site.
A friend of the victim who did not want to be identified “because it won’t change anything”, saying that “what they do is a retrieval operation instead of rescue surgery”.
Damilola Otunla, 29, sat on the sidewalk across the street chasing a three-day vigil for her sister Bob-Oseni Wale, 50, is believed to be in a high increase when it collapsed.
When he heard the news about the disaster on Monday, he immediately rushed to the scene of his house in neighboring Ogun.
Wearing the same gray hoodie, black shorts and flip-flops since Monday, Damilola looked sad, his eyes were empty, when he remembered how his brother acted like a father.
“He took me like his own daughter,” he added.
He was angry with a slow step of a daily rescue effort, which had not started at 8:30 Wednesday morning.
“It seems like they have made their decision,” he said.
Other family members are also on the scene.
Bob-Oseni lives in the US state of Maryland but has returned home for the past few months and visited a friend who worked on the building site, his family said.
He was intended to fly back on Monday when the tragedy occurred.
In one of the worst Nigerian building disasters, more than 100 people, mostly South Africans, died when a guesthouse church was destroyed in Lagos in 2014.
Investigations found illegally and have structural weaknesses.
Two years later, at least 60 people were killed when a roof fell in a church in Uyo, the capital city of Akwa Ibom, in the east of the country.