Posted By  richards on October 30, 2014    
				
				    The Lagos State Commissioner for Physical Planning and Urban    Development, Oluwatoyin Ayinde, has said that the collapsed    six-storey building of the Synagogue Church of All Nations had    no government approval.  
    Ayinde stated this on Thursday while giving testimony before    the coroner probing the cause of the building collapse.  
    No fewer than 116 persons died while several others sustained    varying degrees of injuries in the September 12, 2014 tragedy.  
    Ayinde, in his testimony, said investigations conducted by his    ministry, following the accident, revealed that though the    six-storey building had a record of survey, it however had no    approval of the government.  
    He said the only thing found in the records was an approval for    the churchs main auditorium, adding that though that    auditorium has now been raised to eight floors, the approval    given was only for five floors.  
    The commissioner who described all unapproved structures in the    churchs premises as illegal, stated that there was need to    investigate what he described as unusual practices going on    within the church premises.  
    Ayinde wondered why, for instance, one of the columns    supporting the additional three floors placed on the main    auditorium had to take off from the top of a water tank.  
    He said, The approval that we saw was in the name of the    Syangogue Church of All Nations dated January 26, 2004 but that    approval was just for the main auditorium and one of the things    we discovered was that it was an approval for a five-floor    development. But on our visit to the site, we discovered that    the building had been taken to eight floors; we do not have the    records of the additional floors, making those floors illegal    construction.  
    Did we see anything on the collapsed building? No. In our    records the collapsed building has no approval.  
    He added, Id like to say that with the additional    structure we saw on site, we are inclined to express some    fears. We have seen, for example, that one of the columns is    not taking off from the ground floor, but it is resting on an    existing water tank and I dont know whether any engineer    certified that construction. This needs to be investigated    because it is an unusual practice to start a column middle    way.  
Read the original here:
Synagogue building has no approval, says commissioner
				
Category: Synagogue |  
Comments Off on Synagogue building has no approval, says commissioner                     
Tags: