Plateau state police spokesman Abiy Gupta said 132 people had been rescued and were being treated for injuries in several hospitals.
At least 22 people, including students, are confirmed dead after a two-story school building collapsed in central Nigeria, authorities said, and rescue teams are desperately searching for more than 100 people trapped in the rubble.
Authorities said on Saturday that the school building at Saint Academy in Busa-Buji area of Plateau state collapsed on Friday, shortly after many of the students, aged under 15, had arrived for classes.
A total of 154 students were initially trapped in the rubble, but police spokesman Alfred Arabo later said 132 of them had been rescued and were being treated for injuries in various hospitals.
The Associated Press quoted Arabo as saying 22 students were confirmed dead. Nigerian media had earlier reported that at least 12 people had been killed.
Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said in a Facebook post that 30 people remained in hospital, that rescue operations had been completed and that the site had been turned into a shelter.
Rescue workers were using heavy machinery to free victims, and images from the scene showed crowds gathering around collapsed concrete buildings and piles of rubble.
Dozens of villagers gathered near the school, some crying and some offering to help, while excavators raked through rubble from parts of the collapsed building.
A woman was seen crying and screaming as others tried to hold her back and get closer to the rubble.
NEMA said rescue teams, medical personnel and security forces were dispatched to the scene immediately after the collapse and began searching for the trapped students.
“To ensure speedy medical attention, the government has directed hospitals to prioritise treatment without documentation or payment,” Plateau state information commissioner, Musa Ashoms, said in a statement.
The Plateau State government blamed the tragedy on the school’s “weak structure and location close to the riverbank” and called for other schools facing similar problems to be closed.
Building collapses are common in Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria, with more than 10 recorded in the past two years.
Authorities often blame these disasters on failure to follow building safety regulations, the use of substandard building materials and poor maintenance.
