Lagos State Government on Monday reiterated its determination to prosecute all those who might have been culpable in the recent collapsed building incident that occurred in Ishaga road in Surulere.
The government’s position was made known at a press briefing at the Lagos House, Ikeja by the Commissioner for Special Duties, Wale Ahmed and the Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Ade Ipaye.
Mr. Ahmed stated that the building in question had earlier had a stop work seal placed on it by agencies of the State Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development but was broken into by the developers who illegally continued with the physical development of the defective structure.
He said it was discovered that the contractor was working clandestinely on Sundays since he broke the stop work seal placed on the structure believing that the level of monitoring was always minimal on weekends.
The Commissioner also explained that the state would look inwards and query any staff established to have been negligent in his monitoring duty adding that sanctions would also be applied to all those who broke the seal placed on the building.
He appealed to residents to see the present administration as a responsible one and support its quest to regulate the construction process saying whenever a particular structure is sealed off it should not be seen as an action taken with prejudice but as an action taken to protect human safety.
He said the Commissioner for Physical Planning and Urban Development has been given a mandate to go ahead and take decisive actions on any building on which structural integrity has been carried out by the Material Testing laboratories and confirmed to be defective.
Also speaking, the Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Mr. Ipaye underscored the fact that before any seal is placed on any building, certain things must have happened and that a determination must have been made that such a building is unfit for human occupation.
According to the Justice Minister, in addition to breaking the seal constituting an offence, criminal liabilities could well go beyond that to cover culpability for those who might have died in the building.
