A Lagos State High Court sitting in Ikeja would on Monday arraign the trustees of Synagogue Church Of All Nations, SCOAN over the collapse of a six-storey building in the church on September 12, 2014, which led to the death of 116 persons.
The trustees which include Senior Pastor of the church, Prophet T. B. Joshua will be arraigned before Justice Lawal Akapo alongside the engineers that constructed the collapsed building.
A statement by the Deputy Director, Public Affairs of the Lagos State Ministry of Justice, Bola Akingbade, confirmed the scheduled arraignment.
Justice Ibrahim Buba of the Federal High Court in Lagos had dismissed the fundamental human rights enforcement suits filed by the engineers who constructed the collapsed six-storey building to stop their planned trial.
The engineers— Mr. Oladele Ogundeji and Mr. Akinbela Fatiregun—had filed two separate suits before Justice Buba seeking an order restraining the police from inviting, arresting or prosecuting them over the victims’ death.
The Lagos State Government had set up a Coroner Inquest to unravel what went wrong, and via a verdict delivered on August 7, 2015 by Magistrate Oyetade Komolafe, the Coroner had indicted the engineers and recommended them for investigation and prosecution for criminal negligence.
The engineers had filed the suits following the Coroner’s verdict, which attributed the building collapse to structural defect.
The engineers had specifically rejected the Coroner’s verdict, describing it as “unreasonable, one-sided and biased.”
But Justice Buba, in his ruling on the defendants’ preliminary objection, held that the engineers “had not made out a case of infringement on their fundamental rights even on the merit of the application,” and dismissed their applications.
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