Nigerian church collapse kills at least 160 worshippers

The roof of a church collapsed on to worshippers in southern Nigeria on Saturday, killing at least 160 people with the toll likely to rise, according to a hospital director.

Mortuaries in the city of Uyo are overflowing after the incident, Etete Peters, medical director of the University of Uyo teaching hospital, told the Associated Press.

The Reigners Bible Church International was still under construction and workers had been rushing to finish it in time for Saturday’s ceremony to ordain its founder, Akan Weeks, as a bishop, congregants said.

Hundreds of people, including Akwa Ibom state governor Udom Emmanuel, were inside when metal girders fell on to worshippers and the corrugated iron roof caved in. Emmanuel and Weeks escaped unhurt.

“There were trapped bodies, parts of bodies, blood all over the place and people’s handbags and shoes scattered,” witness Ukeme Eyibio said.

Eyibio, a computer programme analyst, had parked his car outside the complex to make a phone call, heard an explosion he thought was a bomb only to see that the church had disappeared, he said.

Eyibio and three others managed to drag 10 wounded people from an overflow area for of worshippers just outside the collapsed church but they did not enter the main structure because a construction worker among them warned of the danger of a further collapse. The worker called his manager at Julius Berger construction company, who sent a crane to help lift debris off bodies.

While they waited for the crane, Eyibio tried to help a man whose legs were trapped under a steel girder. “I rushed to my car, got out the tire jack and used that to get the beam off his legs,” he said.

“We managed to get him out but we saw others dying all around us,” Eyibio, 27, said. “I’m so traumatised I could not sleep last night for the horrors repeating themselves in my mind.”

 

SOURCE: PTI