S’African Minister: Synagogue Disaster Death Toll Now 115

•    Govt urged to sue the church   Air Traffic Controller: No aircraft can fly four times in that route

Chiemelie Ezeobi with agency report

The death toll from the collapsed Synagogue Church of All Nations  (SCOAN),in Lagos has now climbed to 115 people, with 84 of them South Africans, a South African minister said yesterday, citing sources in Lagos.

Radebe had made this disclosure while receiving the 25 South Africans who were injured at the air force base, North of Johannesburg and were brought home in a military C-130 aircraft for treatment.

“We understand from our assessment team that the total number of people who have perished is now 115, but those are not all South Africans,” said Jeff Radebe, the minister in charge of Pretoria’s response to the disaster.

The casualties include 84 South Africans, said Radebe, speaking after around two dozen injured survivors were repatriated home.

The revelation came as the South African largest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, urged the government to sue the church over the deaths.
Ten days after the disaster, Nigerian officials struggled to immediately confirm the death toll.
“There could have been additional deaths on arrival at the hospitals,” suggested rescuers’ spokesman, Ibrahim Farinloye, of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).
He said it was now up to the church and the various embassies to give the exact final toll.
Radebe, according to the AFP, revised the numbers of injured that arrived to 25, because one refused to board the medical evacuation plane in Lagos and chose to return to the church which collapsed in Lagos on September 12.

The plan was to bring back all the 26, but “there were only 25 who actually boarded the aircraft because one returned to the synagogue yesterday,” said Radebe.

The 26 survived after being trapped under rubble when a guesthouse attached to the church run by the prominent preacher, T. B. Joshua, collapsed more than a week ago.

A 19-member medical team including specialised doctors, nurses and medical military paramedics took care of the injured on board a military C-130 aircraft.
“It’s the biggest evacuation effort by the (South African) Air Force since the dawn of democracy,” two decades ago, said Radebe.

Two orphaned toddlers – that lost their parents in the tragedy – were among the survivors that returned yesterday.

Sixteen of the wounded were in critical condition, with some having had limbs amputated and one developed gangrene in the toes.

Others had developed kidney failure and were on dialysis.
They were loaded from the aircraft at Swartkop Air Force Base onto ambulances and driven to Steve Biko Academic Hospital in the capital Pretoria.

Some 350 South Africans were thought to be visiting the church in the Ikotun neighbourhood of the megacity of Lagos when the three-storey building came down during construction work.

Joshua, one of Nigeria’s best-known evangelical preachers, on Sunday pledged to visit South Africa to meet survivors and their families.

Known by followers across the world as “The Prophet” or “The Man of God,” Joshua claims to work miracles, including raising people from the dead, healing the sick and foreseeing disasters.

Radebe thanked the “Nigerian government for the cooperation that they have had with us in order to ensure we executed this task as a matter of extreme urgency.

“We are keenly awaiting, as the South African government, for the investigation that is being conducted by the Nigerian government so that we get to the bottom of the cause of the collapse of this building that has caused us this national disaster,” he said.

Farinloye said the first investigation meeting would be held today involving state and federal bodies as well as engineers to assess the collapse, its causes and determine next steps.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan visited the church last Saturday and promised to investigate the cause of the tragedy. But South Africa’s largest opposition party the Democratic Alliance would like the government to sue the church over the deaths.

Meanwhile, faulting the claim that a ‘strange’ aircraft had flown over the Lagos headquarters of the church in Ikotun, four consecutive times before it collapsed, as alleged by Joshua, preliminary investigations have revealed that it was nearly impossible.

In an exclusive interview with THISDAY, a senior air traffic control officer who asked not to be named, said preliminary investigations revealed that it was not the same aircraft that flew over the said collapsed building.

He said, “After we got a copy of the video made available to us by the church, we set off to investigate the claims that the same aircraft flew four times over the roof before the building collapsed.

“Remember that the church could not categorically tell us that it was the same aircraft through that their video.

“There is one critical point we want to make, that route over the synagogue is under the flight chat and it is the same route flights take off and land through.
“Therefore, nearly all the aircrafts or planes-both international and domestic, fly through that route. So, there is no way any particular aircraft will fly the same route four times without raising security flags at the control room.

“The only time that can happen is if there is an emergency but it won’t have been four times and it won’t be the same aircraft.”

Recall that SCOAN’s spiritual leader had blamed the collapse, which claimed 86 lives and left 131 others with various injuries, on the said aircraft which he claimed flew over the collapsed building four times at intervals before it collapsed at 12.44p.m. on September 12.