Metal girders and the roof of a crowded church collapsed onto worshippers in southern Nigeria, killing at least 160 people with the toll likely to rise, a hospital director said Sunday.
Mortuaries in the city of Uyo are overflowing from Saturday’s tragedy, medical director Etete Peters of the University of Uyo Teaching Hospital said.
The Reigners Bible Church International was still under construction and workers had been rushing to finish it in time for Saturday’s ceremony to ordain founder Akan Weeks as a bishop, congregants said.
Hundreds of people, including Akwa Ibom state Governor Udom Emmanuel, were inside when metal girders crashed onto worshippers and the corrugated iron roof caved in, they said. Emmanuel and Weeks, who preached that God will make his followers rich, escaped unhurt.
Emmanuel said on his Facebook page late Saturday that “we have never had such a shocking incident in the history of our dear state.”
Many uncounted victims are in private mortuaries scattered across Uyo, youth leader Edikan Peters said. He said some people are secretly taking the bodies of relatives to their homes because mortuaries are overcrowded and some do not have refrigeration.