Pastor and televangelist TB Joshua on Monday again failed to appear
at a coroner’s inquest into a building collapse at his Lagos church
which killed 116 people, including 81 South Africans.
TB Joshua
had been called to give evidence at the hearing but his lawyer, Lateef
Fagbemi, asked for him to be excused because of a pending high court
application.
Lawyers for Joshua,
who has claimed the collapse may have been sabotage, are attempting to
stop the inquest, arguing that the coroner has exceeded his powers to
call him as a witness.
The high court hearing will be held next Monday, the inquest was told.
Coroner Oyetade Komolafe accepted Joshua’s absence pending the high court session.
“Let your client go to the high court and come back,” he told Fagbemi.
Joshua was summonsed twice to appear at the inquest before the application to stay proceedings was made.
The engineer of the collapsed building was in court but said he could
not give evidence because he was ill. Komolafe warned him that he faced
jail if he did not appear on Friday.
Expert witnesses have told
the hearing that there was no sign of an explosion or sabotage of the
building, which housed foreign followers of Joshua’s Synagogue Church of
All Nations (SCOAN).
The Lagos state government has said the
building did not have planning permission and that an inspection had
found that other structures on the sprawling SCOAN site were shoddily
built.
On Joshua’s theory of aerial sabotage from a low-flying
plane, Rafiq Arogunjo, of the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency
(NAMA), said the aircraft seen over the building was on a training
mission.
The Nigerian Air Force C-130 aircraft, flying at 1,100
feet (335 metres), was operating “normally in line with aviation rules”
on the day of the tragedy, September 12, he said.
NAMA officials
reviewed security camera footage of the plane released by church
officials and said the aircraft banked left on four occasions without
flying directly over the building.
Air traffic control at the
nearby Lagos international airport directed the pilot to divert to allow
four incoming flights to land, he added.
The inquest was adjourned until Wednesday
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