School Building Collapses During Palm Sunday Service, Trapping Worshippers

On the afternoon of Palm Sunday, March 29, 2026, a three-storey uncompleted building on the grounds of the Accra New Town Experimental Basic School gave way, burying 23 worshippers who had gathered inside for a Christian service. Three people — one man and two women — were killed. Twenty survivors were pulled from the rubble in an overnight rescue operation involving multiple state agencies [1][2][3].

The collapse, which occurred around 1:00 p.m. local time after a heavy rainstorm, has renewed a familiar and unresolved debate in Ghana: why are people still gathering in structures that were never finished, never inspected, and never designed for public assembly?

What Happened

The building stood within the compound of the Accra New Town Experimental Basic School, a public primary and junior high school in downtown Accra. The structure was uncompleted — a three-storey shell that had been converted into a place of worship by a local Christian congregation [4][5]. Eyewitnesses told reporters that the building suddenly gave way while the Palm Sunday service was underway, sending concrete and debris crashing down on worshippers [6].

Interior Minister Mohammed Muntaka Mubarak, who visited the scene alongside Greater Accra Regional Minister Linda Ocloo and Education Minister Haruna Iddrisu, provided the official casualty figures. Of the 23 people inside the building at the time of collapse, 15 were female and 8 were male. Seven were minors. None of the three deceased were children [7][8].

"What we can say is that there was a total of 23 people. Unfortunately, we've lost three — a male and two females," Mubarak told reporters. He added that the figures had been "cross-checked, double-checked" across hospitals and emergency agencies before being released [7].

The Rescue Operation

Emergency teams from the Ghana National Fire Service, Ghana Police Service, the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), and the National Ambulance Service responded to the scene [5]. Rescue operations continued through the night under floodlights, with heavy equipment used to clear debris carefully. Responders reported hearing voices calling for help from beneath the rubble during the early hours of the operation [5].

The 20 survivors were distributed across four medical facilities: nine at the 37 Military Hospital, seven at the Police Hospital, three at Ga North Municipal Hospital, and one at the University of Ghana Medical Centre [8]. As of the most recent reports, authorities had not yet publicly identified the three deceased victims [3].

The Building: Unfinished, Uninspected, in Use

The collapsed structure was not a functioning school building. It was an uncompleted construction project — a concrete shell on the grounds of a public school that had, at some point, been taken over by a Christian congregation for weekly services [4][6]. No public records have surfaced indicating that the building had undergone structural inspection, received an occupancy permit, or been formally authorized for use as a place of worship.

This arrangement — a religious group using an unfinished or repurposed public building — is common in Accra and other Ghanaian cities. A 2014 academic study published in ResearchGate documented the widespread practice, finding that "the overwhelming majority of religious groups that adopt schools as churches" do so for extended periods, often years, using "borrowed or rented facilities by individuals, uncompleted houses, cinemas, sport centres, and classrooms depending on the sizes of the congregation" [9].

The question of who owns and is responsible for the building remains legally complex. The Accra New Town Experimental Basic School is a public institution, placing the land under the Ghana Education Service and, ultimately, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly. Whether the uncompleted structure was a government-funded project that stalled or a private addition to the school grounds has not been publicly clarified. This ambiguity matters for determining liability, insurance obligations, and any compensation pathway for victims' families.

A Pattern of Collapse

The Accra New Town collapse is not an isolated event. Ghana has recorded at least 42 building collapses between 2010 and mid-2023, killing at least 70 people and injuring 329 others, according to a factbox compiled by Fact Check Ghana [10]. The Greater Accra Region alone accounted for 14 of those collapses, the highest of any region, followed by the Ashanti Region [10].

Source: Fact Check Ghana

Data as of Jul 4, 2023CSV

The pace has accelerated. In the first seven months of 2023 alone, 13 buildings collapsed across seven regions, killing nine people — including two children — and injuring 66 [10]. Among the deadliest incidents in the past decade: the 2012 Melcom shopping centre collapse near Achimota, which killed 14, and a 2014 hotel collapse at Nii-Boi Town that killed four [10].

A NADMO investigation team traced recurring causes across these incidents to foundation failures, poor design and supervision, non-adherence to building codes, and the use of substandard materials [10][11].

Why Buildings Keep Falling: Regulation vs. Reality

Ghana adopted its first comprehensive National Building Regulations in 1996 (LI 1630), later updated with the 2018 Ghana Building Code aligned with international standards [12]. On paper, the regulatory framework exists. In practice, enforcement is a different matter.

A study published in Springer, based on responses from 86 Ghanaian architects, identified "inefficient and insufficient staff, corruption, and absence of public-private partnership" as the primary factors undermining building regulation enforcement [13]. The researchers found that the system suffers from a gap between the code on the books and the capacity to apply it on the ground.

A separate analysis published in The Conversation in 2021 by urban studies researcher Franklin Obeng-Odoom argued that framing Ghana's building collapse problem as a matter of "lax regulation" misses the structural roots [11]. The piece traced the crisis to the economic restructuring programs of the 1980s, when IMF and World Bank interventions removed tariffs on imported building materials, eliminated state housing grants, and redirected housing policy toward private markets. The result: approximately 80% of Ghana's building materials are now imported, raising costs and pushing lower-income builders toward informal construction practices that bypass permitting and inspection entirely [11].

"There is high demand [for buildings] and there is pressure. So, the wrong thing is done hurriedly," one architect told researchers [11].

Building plot prices in major Ghanaian cities rose over 1,000% during the 1980s and 1990s, further pricing out lower-income residents and driving the informal construction sector that now accounts for the majority of new buildings in cities like Accra [11]. In this context, an uncompleted building being used for worship is not an aberration — it is a predictable outcome of a housing market that excludes most of the population from formal processes.

Could This Collapse Have Been Prevented?

The strongest case against foreseeability rests on resource constraints. Ghana's local government authorities — the Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs) responsible for building permits and inspections — are chronically understaffed and underfunded. Political interference and corruption further erode their limited capacity [11][13]. Given the sheer volume of unauthorized construction across Accra, the argument goes, no inspection regime could realistically monitor every uncompleted building.

But that argument has limits. The building was on the grounds of a public school — a government property. The congregation's presence was not hidden; they gathered there weekly in plain sight. Multiple government entities had, at minimum, constructive knowledge that a public building was being used for large gatherings in a structure that was never completed. The failure to act was not a failure to detect — it was a failure to respond.

Whether that failure constitutes legal negligence will likely depend on how Ghanaian courts interpret the duty of care owed by the Ghana Education Service, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, and potentially the church leadership that organized services in the building. No formal investigation findings or legal proceedings have been announced as of March 30, 2026.

Aftermath: School, Church, Community

The immediate consequences extend beyond the casualty count. The Accra New Town Experimental Basic School now has an active disaster site on its grounds. Whether the school can reopen on schedule — and whether parents will send their children back — remains unclear. The congregation that used the collapsed building has lost its gathering place and, more critically, three of its members.

For the 20 survivors recovering in hospitals, the path forward includes not only physical rehabilitation but the psychological toll of surviving a building collapse during a religious service. Seven of the affected were minors [7].

As of March 30, Interior Minister Mubarak and the other visiting officials have not announced specific government aid packages, compensation timelines, or conditions for support. The ministers' visit to the site included assurances that "every possible effort is being made" and that "no effort will be spared" in rescue operations [5], but no public commitments regarding victim support, structural investigation timelines, or policy changes have been articulated.

No NGO or international aid response had been publicly announced at the time of reporting.

The Wider Frame

Ghana's GDP per capita stood at approximately $2,350 as of 2024 World Bank data — placing it among West Africa's middle-income economies but far below the resource levels of countries where building inspection regimes function consistently [14].

Source: World Bank Open Data

Data as of Dec 31, 2024CSV

The gap between Ghana's regulatory ambitions and its enforcement capacity is not unique. Across Sub-Saharan Africa and other developing regions, rapid urbanization has outpaced institutional capacity to monitor construction safety. The 2020 academic study in the Journal of Housing and the Built Environment documented similar patterns in Lagos, Nigeria (112 building collapses from 1978 to 2008) and Kampala, Uganda (54 deaths from building collapses between 2004 and 2008) [11].

What makes the Accra New Town case particularly pointed is the intersection of multiple institutional failures: a public school ground, an uncompleted structure, an unauthorized congregation, and a set of government authorities — education, local government, disaster management — each of which could plausibly claim the problem fell outside their specific mandate.

That institutional fragmentation is itself the problem. Until Ghana resolves the question of who is responsible for monitoring the use of public buildings — and equips that authority with staff, funding, and political independence — collapses like the one on Palm Sunday will remain a matter of when, not whether.

This article is based on reporting available as of March 30, 2026. Casualty figures and investigation details may be updated as authorities release additional information. Some early reports cited different casualty numbers before the Interior Minister's official confirmation of three dead and twenty hospitalized.