Uyo Church Building Collapse: Govt Trying To Cover Up Actual Death Toll?
Concise News correspondents
Conflicting casualty figures have continued to trail the Uyo Church building collapse which occurred on Saturday during a special ordination service of the Bishop of the church, Bishop Akan Weeks.
In attendance was the state governor, Emmanuel Udom, who escaped death by whiskers, and hundreds of worshipers.
The host, Bishop Akan Weeks, also escaped the accident with with injuries according to a twitter photo obtained by Concise News on Monday.
But while many media outlets including CNN, Aljazeera and Punch are reporting death toll, based on their findings, to range from 160 – 200, the state government is insisting that casualty figures is just 26.
Meanwhile, the Chief Medical Director of the University of Uyo Teaching Hospital, Prof. Etete Peters had earlier told news men including the Associated Press that over 160 corpses from the accident have been deposited in the mortuary.
The state government, however, issued a statement on Wednesday claiming that many of the people that were thought dead were later resuscitated.
This is the aftermath of a church collapse in Nigeria https://t.co/EPUBMCWC1C pic.twitter.com/yRzgq6WQF8
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) December 11, 2016
But an official of NEMA who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity said that state officials prevented them from counting the dead.
In a related development the governor of Akwa Ibom has ordered the arrest of the contractor that handled the church construction.
The govt also stated that going forward, only public buildings that pass safety test will be allowed to hold public events. But the fact, however, still remains that the last has not been heard of the actual death toll in the Saturday tragedy.
