Indicted engineers of The Synagogue ask court to quash coroner’s verdict

• Youth group faults ruling on church

A Federal High Court, Lagos has fixed August 3, 2015 to hear two separate suits seeking to quash the coroner’s verdict on the September 12, 2014 The Synagogue Church Of All Nations (SCOAN) building collapse.

The suits, marked as FHC/L/CS/1095/15 and FHC/L/CS/1096/15, were filed by the two structural engineers to whom the collapsed six-storey building was contracted, Messrs Oladele Ogundeji and Akinbela Fatiregun respectively.

Also, a non-governmental organisation, the Coalition of South-West Youth Groups (CSWYG), has faulted the verdict of the coroner, which recommended investigation and prosecution of contractors and structural engineers engaged by the church for criminal negligence.

The Lagos coroner, Mr. Oyetade Komolafe, who conducted an inquest into the deaths of the 116 persons that died in the accident, had on July 8, 2015 indicted Ogundeji and Fatiregun of criminal negligence and recommended them for criminal prosecution by Lagos State.

As a result, Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, last week expressed the state’s readiness to implement the coroner’s verdict including filing criminal charges against the church and the two engineers, Ogundeji and Fatiregun.

Both, through their counsel, Mr. Olalekan Ojo, however, appeared before Justice Mohammed Idris yesterday with ex parte applications seeking to restrain the police from inviting or arresting them for questioning.

Ojo, while seeking the protection of the court for the engineers, said that the police had been after them, claiming that their constitutional rights to dignity and personal liberty, enshrined in sections 34 and 35 of the constitution, were at stake as they could no longer move about freely.

He added that the police had visited the home of Ogundeji, saying that when they did not see him they arrested and detained his brother-in-law.

As for Fatiregun, Ojo said the police went to his office in Ikeja on July 16 to arrest him but he was not around. He was, however, said to have voluntarily gone to the police station following which he was arrested and detained and asked to make written statement regarding the role that his company, Hardrock Engineering Construction Limited played in the collapsed SCOAN building.

Ojo said the move to arrest the engineers on July 16 followed the fundamental rights enforcement action that they filed against the respondents on July 15, challenging the coroner’s verdict.

He said arresting the engineers in the face of the pending suits would mean injustice, saying they had raised serious issues awaiting determination by the court.

Following Ojo’s argument, the judge ordered all the parties to maintain status quo pending the determination of the applicants’ motions on notice.

He adjourned till August 3, 2015 for hearing.

The respondents in the suits are the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN), the Attorney General of Lagos State and the coroner, Mr. Oyetade Komolafe.

CSWYG in a statement signed by its Coordinator and General Secretary, Babalola Medayedupin and Alex Omotehinse respectively, stated that it imagined how the coroner arrived at its conclusion.

The group described the coroner’s recommendation as ‘premature judgment’, which it said confirmed the coroner of being biased, even while it was not allowed in law to make any finding of civil or criminal liability against anybody.