by Simon Ateba
A military jet with five occupants on board flew over a guesthouse at the Synagogue Church of All Nations in Lagos several times before the building crashed and killed more than 100 people on 12 September, a Nigerian Airspace official told the Coroner’s Inquest on Monday.
Deputy General Manager at the Air Traffice Control, a department of the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency, NAMA, Mr Rafiq Olubukola Arogunjo spoke at the Coroner’s Inquest investigating the circumstances that made a six-storey building to suddenly collapse at 22.44 pm on 12 September.
The witness said a Nigerian Airforce jet was on a training mission within the Ikotun area on September 12 when the Synagogue church building collapsed. He said the controversial aircraft had to fly over the Ikotun area about six times due to the high volume of traffic at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos.
Arogunjo however insisted that on each of the six times that the aircraft navigated the Ikotun Area, it maintained a 2700 feet distance from the collapsed building.
He also stated the aircraft which had five crew members operated normally and maintained the minimum distance between a flying aircraft and the tallest building in an area.
He said since the aircraft in question was a military aircraft, NAMA was not under any obligation to probe the mission of the aircraft.
T.B. Joshua had alleged that the guest house was bombed by the occupants of the mysterious aircraft, and a French Army General familiar with bio weapons who conducted a parallel investigation in Lagos said in a report yet to be made public that the building was bombed with an advanced chemical weapon.
But many have rejected that theory, saying that the church might have collapsed due to poor and substandard building materials.
The matter has been adjourned until December 17.
A version of this first appeared on Simon’s blog
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