Fashola spoke at the State House, Ikeja, Lagos, southwest Nigeria on Monday when members of the Nigeria Institute of Town Planners paid him a visit.
The governor said the collapsed building at Synagogue was rather unfortunate, noting that people must understand that the government had repeatedly said it would investigate the tragedy, which he said informed the Coroner inquest instituted to investigate the matter.
“We will definitely investigate the matter. Last week, the Attorney-General empanelled the Coroner’s Court because that is the appropriate machinery of the government to undertake this kind of investigation, especially when people die in such tragic or unnatural circumstances.
“I think we should just allow that process to go on. I think the investigation will be held if we refrain from any comment about this incident. This is the way that every civilised society proceeds and we must assume that all the necessary provisions of law will be complied with. That is our track record here and nothing less will happen in this case. That is the minimum every government must do.
People must understand that when accidents like this happen, there are many stages to it,” he said.
“Perhaps, people have gotten used to what was an inappropriate conduct to get to crime and accident to pronounce this is what has happened before the investigation has concluded. We are professionals, we are not trained like that. If people are not used to our methods, they must get used to it because that is the way we are going to act. We are going to act methodically. We are going to act in civilised manner,” he added.
According to him, government was not going to pronounce anything on the Synagogue tragedy without evidence to show that the person in question had done anything wrong, stressing that government had shown it had the capacity to investigate the issue.
He explained that when such tragedy of that magnitude occurred, there were many stages to it, saying that the first stage involved rescue where everything that mattered was how to get people saved.
“After that, there is a recovery stage, where we live with the reality that no life can be saved any more. And then, we recover and protect the site and all the materials that can be gathered from there. It is from the recovery stage that the investigation stage follows. This is about what we got out of the site.
“When I heard this number of people, I asked questions: are they the ones in charge of mortuaries? How can you pronounce a person dead without a medical officer saying so? So, some of the people we took away from the accident scenes, who are in coma and who are in shock, people count them as dead people. This kind of behaviour must stop.
“Unless there is anybody keeping dead bodies in his house and private hospital, we are the regulators and all those bodies come to our mortuaries. So, we must account for them as well. I understand the public’s interest in this, but we must act methodically. All the materials that are required for the investigation will be referred to the coroner. That is what we talked about this morning really. I did not see it a real town planning issue. It is a building control matter,” he stated.
The governor told the town planners that they had parts to play in some of the collapsed buildings in the state for compromising standards in certain aspects, urging them to be very professional in their work.
“If the truth must be told, government buildings are coming down, at least not in that number. Whether government buildings come down or private buildings collapse, what is true is that the professionals too breached the rules. Government, as an artificial legal entity, is not the one responsible for those collapses.
“It is individuals like you and me, men and women, who have broken the rules. If the buildings erected by Europeans are still standing seventy or eighty years after they did so, this generation must be provoked to self-examination anger. Why is Cocoa House still standing and the buildings constructed twenty years ago coming down? All the professionals in this field must wake up and do their work appropriately. We are provided the regulations,” he said.
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