A floating school built to withstand
storms and floods at a lagoon in Nigeria's commercial capital Lagos and educate children from a nearby
slum has collapsed only seven months after its official opening.
The aid-funded Makoko
Floating School offered
free education to children from nearby huts on stilts. Most of their parents
fish for a living and, like most of the megacity's 23 million residents, lack a
reliable electricity and water supply.
Heavy rains brought down the
pyramid-shaped wooden school, built on a platform held afloat by hundreds of
plastic barrels, on Tuesday. None of its nearly 50 pupils were in the building
when it collapsed, officials said.
Classes had already been moved to
another location in late March after heavy downpours at the start of the rainy
season began to affect classes.
"It is not only the floating school that collapsed. It
collapsed many houses surrounding the floating school," said David Shemede, Makoko resident and brother to
the school's director.
Building collapses are a common problem
in the West African nation, sometimes due to the use of poor materials and weak
enforcement of regulations. At least 30 people died when a building collapsed
in an upmarket Lagos district in March.
The school was built to adapt to
changing water levels and withstand the storms and floods that lash Lagos in
the four-month-long rainy season.
Its Nigerian architect Kunle Adeyemi
said in a statement that the Makoko community was considering upgrading the
structure and rebuilding an improved version of the school.
Makoko was established as a fishing
village hundreds of years ago but climate change and rapid urbanisation are now
threatening its way of life.
The school was officially opened in
November 2015 after being in use for more than a year beforehand. It took three
years to build and catered to children coming from the only English-speaking
school in the area.
Pupils travelled to the school by canoe.
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