This playful story about a lazy lion is now, put to paper, a memory of a young life lost.
Chidera Onovo, 15 years old, was a caring boy who loved to draw and was absolutely his mother’s favorite son.
“He would save his lunch money to buy cookies that he would share with his siblings,” Blessing Onovo recalls. “And he was always the one who would notice my moods and ask, ‘Mommy, are you okay?’”
Last Friday morning, Chidera went to high school with his younger sister Chisom, but only one of them would return.
Official Nigerian government reports say 22 students have died when a building collapsed at Saints Academy, a private school in the central city of Jos. However, local residents say the toll is closer to 50.
Using their bare hands and shovels, parents desperately searched for survivors, and managed to dig a tunnel and free some of the trapped children. “It took about an hour for a digger to come,” said Chidera’s father, Chike Michael Onovo.
“I saw my daughter Chisom being dragged outside. I was relieved but I kept shouting, ‘Where is Chidera, my son?’.”
The boy’s body was later found, crushed by the fallen concrete, in his first-floor classroom.
‘People settle for less’
Victor Dennis, 43, was also frantically searching that day. His worst fears were confirmed the next day when he found the lifeless body of his son Emmanuel in a local morgue.
“My boy was a good boy,” he told the BBC. “He didn’t deserve to die. They killed my son. He didn’t do anything wrong. He just went to school to learn.”
Tears fall from Mr. Dennis’ bloodshot eyes as mourners sing a farewell song at his son’s funeral. Absent is his wife, Emmanuel’s mother, who is inconsolable with grief and remains at home.
The people of Jos supported each other and thanks to blood donors visiting local hospitals, many young lives were saved.
But there is anger and disbelief that another building has collapsed in Nigeria, with residents claiming that children felt the building shake the day before.
“There were poor quality materials used – these could have been responsible for the collapse of the building,” said supervisor and architect Olusegun Godwin Olukoya, who heads the Nigerian Institute of Architects in Plateau State. “Our preliminary investigations indicate that there may have been a lack of compliance with building regulations.”
He has been sharp in his criticism of the builders and the Nigerian authorities, telling the BBC:
“Unfortunately, a lack of willpower has prevented the authorities from adopting our suggestions in the past, given the society we live in.
“People cut corners and when you try to raise the alarm, some people think you are trying to victimize or oppress them. They use their people in positions of power to circumvent the rules.”
Following the collapse of the Saints Academy building, the local governor has ordered a structural audit of all schools and public buildings in Plateau State, of which Jos is the capital.
His administration officials say it is not clear whether the school’s owner, who has since died, ever had a building permit for the site.
The BBC was unable to obtain comment from the school’s management.
Some also suspect that nearby mining activities have caused damage to the school building, which is why the governor has also ordered the arrest of all artisanal miners digging in residential areas in the state.
However, officials suspect the biggest problem was the construction of the school.
“Even as a layman who is not a construction professional, you can see that the materials used in the construction are not standard. But we will investigate the cause of the collapse and punish those found guilty,” Musa Ashom, the state’s information commissioner, told the BBC.
Similar promises came from Nigeria’s Minister of Housing, Ahmed Dangiwa, who slammed “unscrupulous” individuals whose actions he said led to the collapse of the Jos school and untold losses.
But those words will offer little comfort to the many grieving families, such as that of Chinecherem Joy Emeka.
The 13-year-old was one of the best dancers at her school and dreamed of one day becoming a doctor, said her mother Blessing Nwabuchi.
Chinecherem, or Chi Chi as her loved ones called her, was taking her final year exams on the day she died.
Photos like this one, from her high school graduation last year, are treasured reminders of what she accomplished — and all she could have become.
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