At least 22 dead after school building collapses in Nigeria | News

A Plateau State Police spokesman said 132 people had been rescued and were being treated for their injuries in various hospitals.

According to authorities, at least 22 people, including students, were killed when a two-story school building collapsed in central Nigeria. Rescue workers then began a feverish search for the more than 100 people trapped in the rubble.

The Saint Academy building in Busa Buji township, Plateau state, collapsed on Friday shortly after students, many of them 15 years old or younger, arrived for classes, authorities said on Saturday.

A total of 154 students were initially trapped in the rubble, but police spokesman Alfred Alabo later said 132 of them had been rescued and were being treated for their injuries in various hospitals.

The Associated Press quoted Alabo as saying that the deaths of 22 students were confirmed. An earlier report in Nigerian media said at least 12 people were killed.

Nigeria’s National Disaster Management Agency (NEMA) said in a Facebook post that 30 people were still in hospital. The rescue operation has been completed and the accident site has been cleared, it said.

Rescue workers had tried to reach the victims using heavy equipment. Pictures from the scene of the accident showed crowds of people gathered around a collapsed concrete building and piles of rubble.

Dozens of villagers gathered near the school, some crying, others offering help as excavators combed through the rubble of the collapsed part of the building.

A woman was seen crying and trying to get closer to the rubble while others held her back.

NEMA said rescue and health workers as well as security forces were on site immediately after the collapse and began searching for the trapped students.

“To ensure prompt medical care, the government has instructed hospitals to prioritize treatment without documentation or payment,” Musa Ashoms, Plateau State Information Officer, said in a statement.

The Plateau State government blamed the school’s “weak structural integrity and riverside location” for the tragedy and called on schools with similar problems to close.

In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, building collapses are becoming increasingly common. More than a dozen such incidents have been recorded in the last two years alone.

Authorities often blame such disasters on a lack of compliance with building safety regulations, the use of inferior building materials and poor maintenance.