My wife died on her birthday with our last child – Collapsed building victim

Thursday, July 12, 2013 was Kafila Oyeniyi’s birthday. She did not celebrate much, just an intimate period with her husband, Atanda, who had promised her a surprise package later that week.

As  they slept in their apartment at 29, Oloto Street, Ebute Meta, Lagos that night, Atanda told his wife of seven years that by her next birthday, things would be better and they would celebrate it with more fun.

But that birthday was Kafila’s day of death.

She and her one-year-old son were among the seven people who died when their three-storey-building collapsed.

Kafila was a teacher, who lived in one of the apartments on the first floor of the building.

“ A few hours after we finished our conversation, said our prayers and lay on the bed to sleep, a sudden noise woke me up. My six-year-old daughter and three-year-old son were sleeping in the living room while our one-year-old son slept between my wife and I in the bedroom,” Atanda said.

Forty-year-old Atanda, also a teacher, said he was roused from sleep by a loud noise and the voices of people, who turned out to be his neighbours.

He said, “I woke up and heard people calling my name. The neighbours were shouting, asking us to hurry and come out.

“It took me a moment to make out what they were saying. I heard something about the house about to collapse. I acted swiftly and woke my wife up. I told her to grab our toddler.

“I woke my other two children up, but they were not quite awake yet. But I grabbed them and carried them, one on each arm and we made for the door.”

If Atanda did not act swiftly, the house would probably have collapsed on them as they slept in their bed.

But as he led his family towards the door, praying with all his might, shouting “La Ilaha illa Allah, La Ilaha illa Allah…” the house came down.

The bereaved man said, “Immediately, I woke my wife up, she grabbed our little child and strapped him on her back. I told her too to pray as we tried to escape. She did not panic unnecessarily. My wife was a woman of faith. I tried to tear the net on the door. That was when the house collapsed on us. I blacked out immediately.

“A short moment later, I moved. I was disoriented; my body did not feel like mine. Everywhere was dark. I just moved towards an opening in the wall where the door was supposed to be. I stumbled out, covered in blood.”

At 2am when Atanda made it out alive covered in blood and dust, all he could do was point to the house and shout, “My wife, my children, please” as he was rushed to a nearby hospital.

He was physically restrained by sympathisers as he tried to re-enter the collapsed building and rescue his wife and children. They took him to the hospital.

“When I got to the hospital and the doctor tried to sedate me so I could rest, we got into an argument. I told him I could not go to sleep while my family was still in the rubble of our collapsed building.

“He said I could collapse on the way, but I told him I did not care, that I needed to go back to the scene. I got there and was shocked to learn that none of my family had been rescued yet.

“Rescue  operation was already on, but they had not paid attention to the side where my family was yet. I had to raise the alarm and shout at the people there to help look in the side of our apartment.”

Raising the alarm worked, but rescue workers could not get to where his family was until six hours later.

At 8am, Atanda’s two oldest children were brought out alive.

An eyewitness told our correspondent that the two children were brought out completely covered in dust and with minor injuries.

A moment later, rescue workers made a tragic discovery, the lifeless bodies of Kafila and her child.

The child was found without any physical injury, but a beam seemed to have crashed on the mother.

The theory was that the little child suffocated in the dust because rescue workers could not get to them on time.

Atanda looked depressed when he spoke with our correspondent on Tuesday. He spoke calmly, looking towards the rubble that claimed his wife and child, as if they would walk out at moment. There were bruises on his hand, head and legs.

He had summoned the courage to go to the site of the collapsed building and sift through the rubbles of his former home to salvage whatever he could.

“I have nothing at all, safe for what I am wearing now. I am currently living with a family friend, who has been very good to me. I know things will be alright but I am helpless at the moment,” he said.

The site of the collapse continues to play host to a myriad of people – victims, who have come to search for their belongings; scavengers, who have come to hunt for scrap metals and victims’ belongings.

Some of the victims spoke with our correspondent on their close shave with death.

With a heavy dressing on a wound on his head, one of them told Saturday PUNCH that his kindness would have led to his death.

He said, “I woke up around 2am and heard a sound. I looked out of my window and realised my window had fallen off. I knew what was happening right away. I woke my family up hurriedly and we made it downstairs from our first floor apartment.

“When I got downstairs, I realised those in the last two floors did not know what was happening. I was about climbing the staircase to go and warn them when the building collapsed. A beam fell on my head but I was lucky to be alive and crawled out.”

Another victim, Adebayo Ayodeji, who made it out of the building with his pregnant wife alive, was full of praises to God when he spoke with our correspondent.

Ayodeji told Saturday PUNCH, “We were on the first floor of the building and rushed out immediately we heard a sound. Most of those who were trapped in the building were those on the second and third floor.

“Even though we lost everything we had in the collapse, I thank God that all members of my family are accounted for. Immediately we realised the house was about to collapse that night, I carried my children and we ran out.”

Residents said the landlord of the collapsed building ran away very early on the morning of the incident and had not been seen since then.

Many three-storey buildings have been marked as distressed by the Lagos State Building Control Agency since the incident, prompting speculations of impending demolitions.

But the General Manager of the state emergency agency, Mr. Femi Oke-Osanyintolu, said the marks on the buildings did not necessarily mean the buildings were up for demolition.

He said, “This government is not about demolition all the time. We are just being proactive. The idea of marking them is to notify them that the buildings need to be assessed for structural integrity.

“In case of those buildings with notices of evacuation, we only put that there to instruct them to find alternative accommodation pending the time the buildings will be certified ok or otherwise.

“If any building is tested and seen to be bad, we make recommendations for restricting. This is not about demolition at all.”