{"id":1972,"date":"2014-09-20T06:41:12","date_gmt":"2014-09-20T06:41:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=1972"},"modified":"2014-09-20T06:41:12","modified_gmt":"2014-09-20T06:41:12","slug":"synagogue-members-prevented-rescue-efforts-death-toll-to-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=1972","title":{"rendered":"Synagogue members prevented rescue efforts, death toll to rise"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"nrelate_flyout_placeholder\">\n<p>Followers of a controversial preacher and televangelist prevented rescue workers from getting to victims of a collapsed building in Lagos last week, in an accident that claimed the lives of at least 84 people, according to a Nigerian official.<\/p>\n<p>Nigerian Emergency Management Agency said Friday that lives were lost as a result of church officials preventing workers from rescuing people trapped inside the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.france24.com\/en\/20140916-dozens-africans-died-nigerian-church-collapse-says-zuma\/\" target=\"_blank\">multi-storey shopping mall and hotel<\/a> in the port city.<\/p>\n<p>NEMA\u2019s spokesman Ibrahim Farinloye told the Associated Press that the building collapsed at 12:44pm on September 12, but emergency responders did not get full access to the site until two days later.<\/p>\n<p>Described as a megachurch, the building was linked to Temitope Balogun Joshua, better known as TB Joshua.<\/p>\n<p>The wealthy preacher has claimed to have miraculously cured people from illnesses, including HIV, and foreseen the untimely death of pop start Michal Jackson.<\/p>\n<p>Farinloye said that rescuers lost critical hours when most lives are saved. Most of the victims were South African.<\/p>\n<p>Nigerian media reported that rescue workers were attacked by church members who also smashed the camera of a TV journalist at the site.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, South Africa\u2019s high commissioner to Nigeria warned on Friday that the death toll could rise in the coming days.<\/p>\n<p>It is believed that there were 349 South Africans visiting the church at the time of the crash.<\/p>\n<p>South Africa has sent a team of 10 disaster management personnel, including doctors to help in the search.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Followers of a controversial preacher and televangelist prevented rescue workers from getting to victims of a collapsed building in Lagos last week, in an accident that claimed the lives of at least 84 people, according to a Nigerian official. Nigerian Emergency Management Agency said Friday that lives were lost as a result of church officials [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oswh-vO","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1972"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1973,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1972\/revisions\/1973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}