The Rivers State Governor, Sir Siminalayi Fubara has ordered a complete seal off of the site of a five storey building which collapsed on Wednesday, killing one person and injured several others in Port Harcourt.
The Governor visited the site of the incident on Thursday to assess the situation and said that the site will remain completely sealed off until the Government gets to the root cause of the incident.
He described the incident as unfortunate but observed that the preliminary investigation had shown that the developer had earlier refused to subject his site to inspection by the state authorities and comply with the necessary building regulations.
Governor Fubara who inspected the site along side the Commissioner for Physical
Planning and Urban Development, Sir Amairigha Edward Hart and the Permanent Secretary Ministry of Special Duties Dabite Sokari George, explained that he couldn’t visit the site the previous day because he was awaiting formal briefing from the relevant agency of government on the situation.
“We have to see for ourselves the very unfortunate incident that took place here. I didn’t come yesterday because I wanted to get the report first and the Commissioner did brief me that the incident site, first, is not as claimed by the developer, that it’s not under the jurisdiction of the state; that it’s under the jurisdiction of the Federal Housing Authority. He also informed me that when the project was ongoing, they came here severally to inspect what was happening and also to see the level of compliance. But unfortunately, that the developer kept claiming that we don’t have any right to interfere”.
Governor Fubara said that the issue was no longer about interference but about the life lost to the building collapse and the collateral damage brought upon the family of the deceased.
He extended condolences to the families of the victims, insisting that the incident could have been avoided if the developer had complied with the rules guiding the engineering design and construction of such a structure in the 21st century.
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By Bestman Orji, Port-Harcourt
