A Plateau State police spokesman said 132 people had been rescued and were receiving treatment for injuries in different hospitals.
Nigerian authorities have confirmed that at least 22 people, including students, were killed after a two-storey school building collapsed in central Nigeria, prompting rescuers to frantically search for more than 100 people trapped under the rubble.
The building of Saint Academy in the Busa Buji area of Plateau State collapsed on Friday shortly after students, many of them aged 15 or under, arrived for classes, authorities said on Saturday.
A total of 154 students were initially trapped under the rubble, but police spokesman Alfred Alabu later said 132 of them had been rescued and were receiving treatment for injuries in different hospitals.
The Associated Press quoted Alabu as saying that 22 students were confirmed dead. An earlier report in Nigerian media said at least 12 people were killed.
Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency said in a Facebook post that 30 people were still in hospital. It added that the rescue operation had ended and the site had been cleared.
Rescue workers tried to reach the victims using heavy equipment, and pictures from the scene showed crowds gathering around a collapsed concrete building and piles of rubble.
Dozens of villagers gathered near the school, some crying and others offering help, as excavators combed through debris from the collapsed part of the building.
A woman was seen crying and trying to get closer to the rubble while others held her down.
Rescue and health workers, as well as security forces, were deployed to the scene immediately after the collapse and began searching for the trapped students, the National Emergency Management Agency said.
“To ensure prompt medical care, the government has directed hospitals to prioritise treatment without documentation or payment,” Plateau State Commissioner for Information, Moses Achumes, said in a statement.
The Plateau State government blamed the tragedy on the “weak structure of the school and its location near the river bank.” It urged schools facing similar problems to close their doors.
Building collapses have become common in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, with more than a dozen such incidents recorded in the past two years.
Authorities often blame such disasters on failure to enforce building safety regulations, the use of substandard building materials, and poor maintenance.
In 2021, at least 45 people were killed when a high-rise building under construction collapsed in the upscale Ikoyi area of Nigeria’s economic capital, Lagos.
In 2022, at least 10 people were killed when a three-storey building collapsed in the Ebute Meta area of Lagos.
Since 2005, at least 152 buildings have collapsed in Lagos, according to a South African university researcher who investigates construction disasters.
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