A Plateau State Police spokesperson said 132 people were rescued and the injured are being treated at various hospitals.
At least 22 people, including students, have been confirmed dead after a two-story school building collapsed in central Nigeria, officials said, as rescuers searched for more than 100 people trapped in the rubble.
The Saint Academy building in Plateau State’s Busa Fuji community collapsed on Friday, shortly after 15 or so people, many of them 15 or so, had arrived for classes, officials said Saturday.
A total of 154 students were initially trapped in the rubble, but 132 of them were rescued and are being treated for injuries in various hospitals, police spokesman Alfred Alabo said later.
The Associated Press news agency quoted Alabo as confirming the death of 22 students. An earlier report by Nigerian media said at least 12 people had been killed.
Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said in a Facebook post that 30 people were in hospital. The rescue operation was over and the site was destroyed, it said.
Rescue workers used heavy machinery to reach the victims, and images from the scene showed people gathering around a caved-in concrete building and piles of rubble.
Dozens of villagers gathered near the school, some crying and others offering to help, as excavators cleared debris from part of the building.
A woman was seen wailing and trying to get closer to the wreckage as others stopped her.
NEMA said rescue and health personnel and security forces were deployed at the scene immediately after the collapse and are searching for the trapped students.
“To ensure prompt medical attention, the government has instructed hospitals to prioritize treatment without documentation or fees,” Plateau State’s Information Commissioner Musa Ashoms said in a statement.
The Plateau state government blamed the tragedy on the school’s “weak structure and location near the riverbank”. It has urged schools facing such problems to be closed.
Building collapses are becoming common in Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria, with more than a dozen such incidents recorded in the past two years.
Authorities often blame such disasters on non-enforcement of building safety norms, use of substandard construction materials and poor maintenance.
In 2021, at least 45 people were killed when a high-rise building collapsed under construction in the upscale Ikoyi district of Lagos, Nigeria’s economic capital.
In 2022, at least 10 people were killed when a three-storey building collapsed in Ebute-Metta area of ​​Lagos.
Since 2005, at least 152 buildings have collapsed in Lagos, according to a South African university researcher studying construction disasters.
