Hundreds
had been inside the Reigners Bible Church International in the city of
Uyo on Saturday for the consecration of founder Akan Weeks as its bishop
when the metal girders fell and the corrugated iron roof caved in.
Screaming survivors streamed out amid cries from the injured inside.
"There
were trapped bodies, parts of bodies, blood all over the place and
people's handbags and shoes scattered," said computer analyst Ukeme
Eyibio.
Officials feared the death toll could rise.
Weeks and Akwa Ibom state Gov. Udom Emmanuel were among the survivors.
Eyibio
had parked his car outside the complex to make a phone call when he
heard a deafening crash and saw that the church had disappeared.
He
and three others dragged 10 injured people from an overflow area for
worshippers just outside the collapsed church. They did not enter the
main structure because a construction worker warned it was not safe.
The worker called his boss at Julius Berger construction company, which sent a crane to help lift debris off bodies.
While they waited for the crane, Eyibio helped a man whose legs were trapped under a girder.
"I rushed to my car, got out the tire jack and used that to get the beam off his legs," the 27-year-old said by telephone.
"We
managed to get him out, but we saw others dying all around us," he
added. "I'm so traumatized I could not sleep last night for the horrors
repeating themselves in my mind."
Mortuaries
in Uyo were overwhelmed by the disaster, medical director Etete Peters
of the University of Uyo Teaching Hospital told The Associated Press.
Many
of the dead were taken to private mortuaries scattered across the city,
said youth leader Edikan Peters. Some people were taking the bodies of
relatives to their homes because of the overcrowding.
Peters
said he counted 90 bodies removed from the church before he was stold
to stop his tally Saturday night. Journalists also said that church
officials sought to prevent them from documenting the tragedy, trying to
seize cameras and forcing some to leave the area.
The
church had been still under construction and workers had been rushing
to finish it in time for Saturday's ceremony, congregants said. The
governor's spokesman, Ekerete Udoh, said the state government will
investigate if any building standards were compromised.
Buildings
collapse often in Nigeria because of endemic corruption, with
contractors using substandard materials and bribing inspectors to ignore
shoddy work or a lack of permits.
In
2014, 116 people died when a multistory guesthouse of the Synagogue
Church of All Nations collapsed in Lagos, Nigeria's largest city. Most
victims were visiting South African followers of the megachurch's
influential founder T.B. Joshua.
Two
structural engineers, Joshua and church trustees were accused of
criminal negligence and involuntary manslaughter after a coroner found
the building collapsed from structural failures caused by design and
detailing errors.
Efforts to bring them to court have been foiled by
repeated legal challenges.