According to TB Joshua's very own Emmanuel TV, a low flying plane was linked to the collapse of his building. The security footage it flighted, shows that the plane flew past at 11:54. The building collapsed almost an hour later at 12:44.
If a plane had crashed into TB Joshua's building, the wreckage would be obvious. The moment of impact would definitely have been noticed by many witnesses.
Mention of a plane is a desperate attempt to divert blame and will only be taken seriously by those without technical know-how.
If the building was sensitive to vibrations then a passing truck would have been far much more of a hazard than even an A380 taking off. The ground transmits vibrations better than air. That's is why there is earthquakes and never airquakes. It would still mean the building was poorly and inappropriately designed.
Clearly the insinuation carried by the claims of a low flying plane is that some sort of supernatural powers were involved in the collapse. The insinuation of black-magic is utter hogwash coming from a man who claims he is in contact with god so much that he could foretell the deaths of presidents.
He claimed to have foretold the death of Bingu wa Mutharika. How could he fail to foretell the collapse of his own building, and deaths of his own followers? By his own claims, he was given one whole hour of forewarning by the passing of a low flying plane.
Surely, if he could foretell anything, the building could have been evacuated of all people in that time. If his powers were so easily defeated by two bit n'angas (sangomas/witchdoctors) in low flying planes then it is himself admitting that he is a fake.
That aside, the bottom line is a construction site should NEVER EVER have been used to accommodate people. That is STANDARD well established safety practice. A high school building student will tell you that.
The Nigerian authorities themselves need to answer questions on why that was allowed. Do they not carry out construction site inspections in Nigeria?
Then there is that the collapse itself seems to have been kept under wraps for a day or two. That could not have happened without the complicity of people high in authority. How high I don't know.
When the first plane flew into the World Trade Centre on 9-11-2001 we were watching the news on the internet within minutes. How come it took days for a this particular collapse to start filtering into the mainstream news?
As far as I can see, this is more of a scandal for the Nigerian government than for TB Joshua. That is if Nigeria has a government given their handling of Boko Haram and the abduction of school girls about a year ago.
From the hard facts so far, it is clear this is a simple structural failure of a building under construction. Such failures are normally rooted in the owner trying to save costs by cutting numerous corners. While the owners are ultimately to blame, professionals who may have gone along with cuckoo brained cost cutting short-cuts must also be held to account.
Concrete on its own, stone and sand bonded with cement, has a tendency to develop micro-fractures over time. That is why it is always reinforced with steel in most applications. The right amount and type of reinforcement is critical to its ability to bear weight. Any home owner knows that you can put concrete footing with no reinforcement when you built a single storey house, but you can't do that for a multi-storey house.
The higher you go the more reinforcement you need in the foundations, thus the foundation design changes. Its cost increases as well thus normal practice is to design a foundation only as strong as needed for the planned building.
If a foundation is designed for certain number of floors, you can not just raise the building without re-designing and re-doing the foundations. That is why they demolish whole buildings, dig up the foundations and start from scratch when they build bigger buildings where smaller ones used to stand.
Other problems may occur such the crew stealing materials resulting in less steel or cement being used. Some owners may even buy less material than required in an effort to save money. It does not seem to have been the case here.
The problem seems to be that the building was just raised from four to six floors (doubling the weight the foundation had to carry) without re-designing the foundations. If a proper building approval and construction inspection regime had been followed. That should never have happened.
My guess is that either corruption was involved, or there was no proper construction inspection regime. Either way the buck stops with the authorities.
Nigeria needs to account for what happened here.
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