by Chidi Okoye

According to the South African Press Agency, one of the 26 people injured in the Synagogue church building collapse opted to stay back in Nigeria to continue his worship at the Synagogue.

The South African government says that around 115 people, among them 84 South Africans, were killed and dozens trapped when the multi-storey guest house attached to the Synagogue Church of All Nations collapsed on September 12.

About 350 South Africans were thought to be visiting the church in the Ikotun area of Lagos when the building came down.

“I must say only 25 boarded the aircraft because one returned to the synagogue yesterday,” Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe told reporters at the Swartkop Air Force Base in Pretoria shortly after the survivors arrived on Monday.

“I don’t know the specific reasons of the person who returned to the synagogue.”

Social workers received two South African toddlers orphaned by the collapse when they arrived at the Steve Biko Academic Hospital on Monday. The two were aged 18 months and two years, said acting Cabinet spokesperson Phumla Williams. Another child, aged six, was also part of the group of injured South Africans arriving from Nigeria. Williams said the three children were in good hands.

Sapa further reports that none of the 25 injured South Africans, who survived a building collapse in Nigeria, has been discharged from hospital yet.

“The doctors were doing assessments yesterday and whatever needs to be done in terms of medical care, and they continue to do so,” health department spokesperson Joe Maila said today.

“They all have different kinds of injuries; different levels of injuries.”

Maila did not specify what sort of injuries they had, or how many of them had to have surgery.

The injured were admitted to the Steve Biko Academic Hospital in Pretoria yesterday shortly after arriving in the country. The SABC reported that 10 of the injured had undergone surgery on Monday night. It reported that most of them had sustained fractures.

YEditor