Abia State Government has vowed to put strict measures in place to ensure that all advertisement billboards in the state, especially those erected in its city centres, are properly erected to prevent them from collapsing.

The decision was taken to prevent the collapse of billboards like the one that occurred on Wednesday at the Salad Market, in the Government Reserved Area (GRA) of Aba North Local Government Area of Abia State, which caused the death of one person and injured 8 others.

Victoria Onwubiko, managing director/chief executive officer, Abia State Structures for Signage and Advertising Agency (ABSSAA) in an interview with newsmen, Thursday, during a visit to the site of the accident, attributed the collapse of the billboard to structural defect and insisted that government engineers would henceforth supervise the erection of all billboards in the state.

Onwubiko, who expressed displeasure over the incident, said, “As a human being, I feel sad. As a state, we are pained that such a thing has happened and somebody had died and so many others hospitalised. It was a sad day for everybody, and the government has taken measures to ensure that those injured are taking good care of at the hospital.

“We have also contacted the family of the deceased and the owner of the collapsed structure and he is sending a representative from Lagos to meet with us. Also, a member of the Outdoor Advertising Practitioners is also here with us. So, everything is been done to make sure that we do the right thing.”

She also explained that Governor Alex Otti has given the necessary approval for every procedure to go on without holding back.

“So, we are glad that there will not be any more death. From what we have seen, the hospitalised victims are all recovering and are all doing well.

“We understand that they are about 8 in all, 5 are here at the Abia State University Teaching Hospital, 3 have been discharged, while 1-person died at the site of the accident.”

To stop such from reoccurring, Onwubiko said that the Agency was going to carry out structural inspection of all sites.

“We are going to ask the owners of sites, like this to give us the technical drawing with which they built the sites.

If we don’t see them, the site will come down, so that they will do it again.

“Beside that, we are going to do a technical assessment of all boards in the state to ensure that they are all sound. So, any site that is not sound will go down,” he said.

She observed that the board, which was erected about 5-years ago was apparently not well done, which was why it collapsed.

Going forward, she said that government is going to put stricter measures in place to make sure that all the boards that are of such height and even the smaller ones are properly erected.

“We’ll ensure that technically sound engineers supervise the erection of such structures in future. So, government is doing all it can to ensure that this does not happen again.

Chinedu Nwibo, a vulcanizer and an eye-witness, said that 7 of the victims, who were tricycle operators, were inside his makeshift shop when the rain started, but that they left and moved into their tricycles, to protect themselves from the rain.

According to him, it was not long after they went into their tricycles that the big billboard fell on them.

One of my brothers, Destiny Uguru, 27 years old, from Izzi, in Ebonyi state died from the mishap, while 7 persons were injured from the collapsed structure.

He appealed to the state government to come to the aid of the victims, especially the family of the late Uguru whose wife is pregnant.

Victor Onyendi, a resident who also witnessed the incident, accused the construction company that erected the billboard of using substandard materials for the structure. (BusinessDay)