By Abdulwahab Abdulah & Bartholomew Madukwe

Lagos—Deputy President of the Nigerian Institute of Engineers and member of the Building Collapse Prevention Guild (BCPG), Mr Oreoluwa Fadayomi, yesterday told a Lagos State Coroners Court investigating the September 12, 2014 collapsed guest house at the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN), that the debris of the collapsed building was enough to determine the causes of failure.

TB Joshua-Synagogue Church

“If I had visited the scene earlier than the time I did, I would have had better material to carry out a better investigation into the incident. As at the time I got to the scene of the failed structure, members of the collapsed building body were already disjointed. What we saw on ground was however enough to determine the causes of failure,” he said.

Testifying before the Coroner’s Court, presided over by Chief Magistrate Oyetade Komolafe, Fadayomi noted that there could be errors in the technical report he submitted to the coroner, but it could only be typographical and not technical.

During cross examination by lawyer to SCOAN, Mr. Olalekan Ojo, the engineer explained that he visited the scene of the collapsed building seven months after it had collapsed (March 5, 2015).

On the legality of BCPG , Fadayomi said he was only aware that the society is properly registered with Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).

At the last hearing of the matter, former chairman of the defunct Nigerian Geo-technical Association, Joseph Folayan, had revealed that the guest house belonging to SCOAN did not collapse as a result of foundation defects.

Folayan who had equally punctured the report tendered by the Lagos State Material Testing Agency which claimed in its Structural Integrity Test(SIT) on the building that the collapse which led to the death of 116 persons was caused by a defective foundation, stressed that the materials used for the foundation base was adequate for the structure.

“The collapse of the building of the Synagogue Church did not occur as a result of foundation failure. There could not have been overloading because the strength of the soil based on the exhibit before the court can carry that load,” Fadayomi stated.