Festus Eriye
On many fronts, Nigeria is a disaster waiting to happen. We are confronted with evidence daily but those who can make a difference appear powerless or have the wrong priorities.
Sunday’s explosion at the Abule-Ado suburb of Lagos which has already claimed 20 lives and left scores injured, is a reminder of how cheap life is in Nigeria.
President Muhammadu Buhari has called the incident “unfortunate.” Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu rushed off to Abuja with pictorial evidence perhaps to drive home the scale of the calamity. Hopefully, federal assistance may be forthcoming as a result of the trip.
There are natural disasters over which little or nothing can be done – earthquakes, flood, mudslides, volcanic eruptions and the like. Accidents will happen but some are avoidable. Was this an avoidable incident or a man-made disaster?
A senior official of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has revealed that an eight-tonne truck laden with core stone was parked on the pipeline and exerted too much pressure on it for an extended period. Fuel that escaped from it soon saturated the atmosphere, creating the setting for one almighty explosion.
The chain of events leading to the Abule-Ado disaster are repeated every day in cities across the country. You have people building on drainage channels, under high tension electricity lines or next to pipelines carrying petrol.
Those who should check these infractions simply turn the other way. Were another “unfortunate” Nigerian disaster to occur would such government officials be guilty of incompetence, negligence, corruption or manslaughter? You be the judge.
The truck now blamed for the incident reportedly broke down and was abandoned by an individual who was probably ignorant of what his casual act could lead to.
He could have made an effort to get a van to tow his crippled vehicle away to safe ground. He didn’t and today at least 20 innocent souls are dead. Is this manslaughter or just another “unfortunate” Nigerian calamity? You be the judge.
Although the damaged houses in Abule-Ado were not exactly sitting on the pipeline, they were close enough to be eviscerated by the force of the blast. This raises the question of how casually we treat town planning laws. In Lagos and many other places it is no longer a strange sight to find a gas plant or petrol station sited in the midst of densely populated areas.
Some of these places are not mixed residential-industrial developments. But some official betrayed public trust and approved the siting of a station for dispensing flammable substances where it not only hinders traffic flow but endangers life.
In the light of a series of terrible disasters that have occurred in recent years when vandals broke into pipelines and sparked off infernos, we ought to reconsider what is a safe distance to build in the vicinity of pipelines and gas plants.
Although they mouth all the right platitudes, our approach to enforcement shows that public safety is not such a high priority for our governments. Today, we are mourning the hapless who perished last Sunday. But we continue to flirt with disaster in many other ways in Lagos.
In the past, I have argued that the dangerous act of driving against traffic has become almost cultural for road users. Many regard it as the normal thing to do at the least sign of inconvenience and over the years casual enforcement of the rules has reinforced this belief. That is until another disaster happens and public officials queue up to offer lame condolences that would have been unnecessary had the right things been done.
But then Lagos is way ahead of many states in its commitment to public safety. Its reforms are being copied by others. Former Governor Akinwumi Ambode invested heavily in the emergency services and the city is reaping the benefits. Still, we remain a long way off.
In many states and at federal level you can hardly find functional fire trucks and heavy duty equipment needed by the emergency and rescue agencies.
Yet the House of Representatives just voted billions to buy members shiny new automobiles. Fresh from his transformation from election loser to miracle governor, one of Senator Douye Diri’s first gubernatorial acts in Bayelsa State, was to expend a couple of billions for the purchase of new cars. How many ambulances or fire trucks does the state have?
The Federal Government’s response to the Coronavirus action is another example of how we flirt with disaster. President Buhari hasn’t thought it necessary to address Nigerians to drive home the gravity of the health challenge. From Ghana to Canada, US to UK, presidents and Prime Ministers are speaking words of comfort to their people.
These leaders recognize that the outbreak is almost a war situation and have been fronting up the campaigns to reassure their people.
Interestingly, we shut our borders because of rice smugglers, but won’t restrict access into our shores for people coming from coronavirus endemic countries. We shut the border against a threat to our income, but have left it wide open to a threat to life. Remember, only the living can earn an income.
Scientifically, there has been no clear explanation why the virus has not exploded in Africa. But cases have been reported in South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana and Egypt to name a few. So we shouldn’t delude ourselves into thinking that our dark skin frightens the coronavirus.
If countries with more resources and better healthcare facilities are taking drastic steps to lockdown cities and restrict mass gatherings, it beggars belief that given the inadequacies of our system, presidential leadership is so lacking at a time it is sorely needed.
What is the contingency plan if there were an outbreak in a society where many people cannot afford to be quarantined or self-isolated because they cannot survive without eking out daily income? Is there a plan for enforcing lockdown of communities and towns if it comes to that?
It is already happening across the globe and any sense of Nigerian exceptionalism is just self-delusion.
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