Barely two weeks after the Minister of Sports visited The National Stadium for assessment of facilities, Lagos is again in the news for the wrong reasons after one of the floodlights inside the dilapidated sporting arena collapsed following a downpour.
As gathered from eye witness that No casualties were recorded
But one of the floodlights pillars in Terrace K of the stadium caved in from the middle, forcing the floodlights to land on the empty space beside it.
An eyewitness, Temitope Oloyede, an athlete, who was at the stadium for his routine training, said “We took cover in one of the buildings at the stadium because of the heavy rains and windstorm, when we heard a loud noise.
We didn’t know it was the floodlights that had collapsed until after the rain, when we resumed our training. Thank God no death or injury was recorded.”
He also urged the government to immediately renovate the edifice to avoid a “future disaster.”
“Athletes and people who visit the stadium for fun were lucky it was raining heavily and were not around the scene. It could have been worse,” Oloyede added.
The stadium, built in 1972, was one of Africa’s iconic sporting arenas at the time and hosted top international sporting events like the African Games in 1973, the 1980 and 2000 African Cup of Nations finals and the U-20 World Cup (1999).
However, the stadium has been left to rot for close to two decades, with successive administrations only paying lip service to its renovation
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