Whitney Adeniran: Chrisland School lied, tampered with evidence, broke all safety rules for events in Lagos State

Emmanuel Ukudolo I Thursday, June 13, 2024

 

IKEJA, Lagos, Nigeria – The trial of Chrisland High School Ikeja, for the death of 12 year old Whitney Adeniran continued at the Lagos State High Court Ikeja, with a Safety Officer with the Lagos State Safety Commission, Engineer Waheed Wahab testifying before the court.

According to him, Chrisland School did not only tamper with evidence at the scene where Whitney Adeniran died, but broke all rules of safety. Besides, he said findings indicate that Chrisland High School Opebi has been economical with the truth, when it comes to disclosing all the material facts of the case when the commission simulated the event based on information provided by the school.

In fact, Wahab said contrary to information provided by the school, the candy machine  was close to the scene of the incident and that there were no restrictions between areas designated for generating sets and the incident contrary to claims by the school management.

Wahab is the fourth prosecution witness, who claimed he investigated the incident, before Justice Ogala of the Lagos State High Court, Ikeja. While being led in evidence by Director of Public Prosecution, DPP Dr. Babajide Martins at the ongoing trial today, the witness said “No risk assessment was conducted.”

“We respond to any emergencies in Lagos State and also carrued out accident and incident investigations. He said the commission is saddled with the responsibility to unravel the root cause and immediate cause of any accident and incident of safety matters.

According to him, the agency also gives recommendations to prevent further incidents. Engineer Wahab said what is required by Lagos State Safety Commission for any school to hold any public event is a permit. “You are required to obtain what we call “Event safety permit.”

Speaking further, the state official said “Once you are to have an event that is above 250 people in attendance you’re required to obtain safety permit, you go to our website to register the event, we get the notification in our office and our officers from event department will be sent to the facility to carry out risk assessment of the facility, in which we give our requirements and recommendations of things to put in place to prevent accident.

“And once we carry out a risk assessment and every recommendation has been put in place, that is when we can issue a safety permit. On the day of the event, we also send in our safety marshals to make sure that what we recommended during the application are actually implemented during the event and they would also be there on the day of the event, to be the watchdog.”

He added that once the attendees are above 250, other protocols are required to be complied with. There must be “an ambulance on ground, to have first aiders, adequate fire-fighting equipment, in case of fire emergencies.”

Speaking of the involvement in relation to the case against the five defendants standing trial, Wahab, explained, “Our agency was made aware on the 13th of February, 2023, we went on joint inspections with the Ministry of Youth and Social Development, DSVA and our agency, which is the Ministry of Safety Commission.

“We went to the incident scene at Agege Stadium, our purpose of visiting Agege Stadium is to really observe safety infractions on Monday, 13 February, 2023.”

“When we got to the incident scene, most of the evidence had been tampered with, so we were left with taking pictures and interrogating the school management and the people that witnessed the incident.”

“Fortunately, that day we went there was another school having inter-house sport, it was an opportunity for us to have a kind of feel of what actually happened on that day, because there were vendors all around as the day we visited.”

“We also visited Chrisland School Opebi.” On findings of the agency, Wahab said, “The school failed to obtain event permit from Lagos State Safety Commission. No risk assessment was conducted. No ambulance service was available. Poor emergency management system in place. Poor emergency communication. No retainership hospital close to the event centre.”

Our findings on protocols, “No risk assessment was conducted.” In terms of events safety guidelines to be complied with, he reiterated that, “the school failed to obtain a safety permit.”

He said after the visit of 13th, other visit by the Safety Commission were done without the involvement of other agencies, in order to get more facts relating to the incident, so as to establish its findings.

According to him, “When we got to the scene we tried to simulate the claims made by the school, the claim was that the candy machine was not close to the incident scene but on the second visit we discovered that the candy machine was close to the incident scene.”

“We also discovered that no restrictions were made to the vendors in terms of the vendors using power generating set at the incident scene. As a result there was a high possibility of cables/wires dangling around, so that confirmed our initial findings that no risk assessment was done. Our other findings was that a school bus was used in place of an ambulance which is not acceptable because an ambulance was expected to have 2 doctors and 3 certified nurses.

He continued “When you have an event like that, in case of emergency a retainer-ship hospital must have an accessible medical response.

“The school only has only one first aider arrangement, which is the school nurse. No safety marshal was on ground because they didn’t apply for a safety permit.”

The prosecutor also informed the court of having some documents to tender but Counsel to Olukayode Enitan, SAN, said he would not be opposing the document despite not being front loaded. Justice Oyindamola Ogala adjourned till July 1, 2024 for continuation of trial.