The South West Zone of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has said that its rescue team failed to get to the scene of the collapsed building, which occurred at Sogoye area of Ibadan, the Oyo State capital on Friday because of lack of required equipment.
The Zonal Coordinator of NEMA, Slaku Bijimi, while addressing journalists on Saturday maintained that the incident that happened warranted that there was an excavator which the management does not have.
He also lamented that the people at the scene were hostile to NEMA officials.
Bijimi said “We needed excavator, and we didn’t have, so we had to source for it, and that certainly will take time.
“We were able to mobilize two and we came to start work.
“The second problem was that this place was crowded, even to gain access was a challenge. Some of our staff were stoned.
“Its frightening when you want to rescue and people have taken over.
“I know they are angry because of what happened, but I think we need more awareness creation among ourselves and we are thinking that what we will do is to even train some of the people as volunteers.
“But the basic thing is that we had problem of equipment which tool us time to secure, and we got it finally.
“When we came here during the exercise, we were able to rescue two people. I can say that because that was what we saw and the were taken to the hospital by the Federal Road Safety Corps.’
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