Jumade Adejola is the Managing Director/CEO, Surveillant Limited,a fire engineering company. In this interview with Ibrahim Apekhade Yusuf he speaks on poor safety awareness culture among Nigerians vis-à-vis the challenges of fire protection in the 21st century among other sundry issues. Excerpts:
Could you tell us about your foray into fire engineering?
Our company has been in existence for close to 20 years now, and what brought us to this profession is a passion for safety of lives and property. I could remember when I finished schooling, the first place I worked was a fire engineering company and ever since, I had passion for this job, we have been in this business from 1998, but it was 2001 we later registered the company by 2005, the company became a limited liability company. We have tried our best in this industry because when we started we believed that the way people are doing the business it like they don’t know the reason why they are doing it.
I give the credit to my boss then Chief Banjoko, who was the president of Fire Association as at that time because we clamour for quality, every time when it comes to fire installations from then I knew that whatever you want to do at all, whatever that is worth doing at all must be worth doing well. That is why we pride ourselves with quality delivery of service.
From day one, we decided that we will not do anything less than quality. When you look at the environment, every product that you see us selling here are not just quality products but approved products, what I mean is products that have been approved by the quality approval institutions, like U L, what they call the U L is the Underwriter Laboratory, and all the products are approved by ISO certification.
If you look at what Lagos state is doing currently, there is a body called the Lagos State Safety Commission, between June 26th and 28th we are going to have what we call Vision Zero, it is zero tolerance to accident, zero tolerance to any workforce mishaps and its coming up in a few weeks from now.
Now coming back to Surveillant Fire Limited, basically we are fire and security system engineering company, majorly fire. Anytime you see us going out to do our jobs, we first of all do the designing. Because it’s from the design we actually know specifically what we are going to put in those buildings or anywhere they want us to put it. Then we select the products, the products we are selecting are approved and quality product. We don’t deal with roadside products, we don’t even shop around for products, we bring in all our products and warehouse them, from UK, US, Dubai, Malaysia and Singapore.
Then from design, we go to installation, the type of installation we do, we do it to suit the type of design the client has approved, because the client has to approve their design before we go to site.
And when you give us job, you discover that we spend much time on design than the time we spent at the site. The reason behind this is that immediately you have completed and concluded on the design, what you then go and do on the site is just to fix. You look at the design and just fix it, and then it now calls to after sales services.
We provide what is called after sales services, and that is quality service delivery. We always tell our clients that they shouldn’t only install but to also maintain what they have installed, because the major issue that we have had in this nation is lack of maintenance culture, and we don’t want a situation whereby when you install you don’t maintain it, because the product you don’t maintain will get spoilt.
There are so many fire engineering companies out there, but we don’t see ourselves competing with them because they are not doing what we are doing in terms of service delivery and in terms of product selection.
We have never recorded any accident in our clients facilities, so we are proud to say that everywhere we go majority of the high rise buildings in Lagos today, they have used our services because they have believe in us, they have trust and that is what we have been doing. Before we can do any installation, we do a total survey, risk assessment and then advice our client appropriately.
Could you expatiate on the vision zero that the Lagos state government is advocating?
At first, it was the vision of the Singaporean government, and it’s not about the Singaporean government alone but it’s about the safety environment. The World Safety Organisation gathered together last year in Singapore and decided that in all nations of the world should begin to attain or move forward towards attaining vision zero in accidents, though people may think it’s difficult but if you put what is right in its position, you can attain it. And what are those things that are right, you practice what is called safety health environment and quality management into whatever you do, you can achieve it. How do you want to achieve it, you can achieve it in the sense that for example if you are working in an environment where the safety procedure is totally complied with. For instance if you come into this office and there is water all over the caution must be put in place.
Lagos State has taken safety seriously, that is why the forthcoming vision zero event is underway, and it is not only Lagos State, it is also coming up in other states of the federation as well. This is because to become a smart megacity your safety must be 100%. In a smart megacity your infrastructure must be developed, you must have all it takes to attract the business community. That is why every agency in Lagos State are doing their best to ensure they have what it takes.
I can tell you also that the federal government has hinted of plans to bring in a lot of fire trucks again, with what they already have in Lagos State and being a consultant to some of these agencies, like the Lagos State Safety Commission, we ensure that these things are complied with. And because we want the state and people in it to be safe, that is why before you can work with such people you must understand what safety is all about, you must understand quality because you don’t just use anything. For example, if you buy extinguishers that are not properly filled or are fake products, the reason why you buy fire extinguishers is for you to put out fire at the initial stage. If you buy fire extinguisher that is fake, you may feel disappointed by the time of use.
As a foremost fire engineer, can you tell us the statistics of fatalities, especially fire incidents recorded in the last few years in the country? What is the quantum of loss in financial terms for this period?
The first thing we need to clear is ignorance, and the reason is very simple because apart from ignorance, we have safety laws and so many safety codes in Nigeria, but implementation has always been the problem. I always tell people you can’t teach me to save myself from an incidence when I know that if I make any mistake I’m dead, I need to have that mindset to ensure that I’m safe in every environment I find myself. For example, many homes today don’t have fire extinguishers because when there is a fire incident, you can use the extinguisher to escape from your home.
Even all my friends that I know, there is no single friend of mine that don’t have fire extinguishers in their house because I must force them to have it. It’s not about the cost or money, it’s about safety because I don’t want to cry over any of my friends, because when it happens, they will say after all he is your friend, why must fire kill your friend, so I want to avoid that.
Everybody should have fire extinguisher, not only in your house but including your car. To now go to the estimate, let me put it this way, statistics is very difficult in Nigeria because we don’t keep records, but we have been able to use the international records. In 2013 or 2014 we had a meeting in the United Kingdom, Bristol to be precise, why did they call the meeting, it was because they discovered that the false alarm in Britain has cost them over 3billion pounds, and they want to stop it. So immediately there is an alarm the fire fighters have to move to the scene of the incident, and when they get there, they would discover that it was a false alarm.
They have calculated all those cost over the years and they discovered that every year it costs them to the tune of 3billion pounds. So they have to warn all the manufacturers of those products that if you don’t produce and ensure that they enforce alarm management on their products, anytime we get to that scene and its false alarm, and it’s your products we will charge you. So all the manufacturers came together to borrow themselves sense because in the United Kingdom when they say something, they will do it. That’s why majority of the products they have now has the false alarm management in place, so there would not just be any false alarm.
If you now look at the estimate, I can say that we loss about N10billion every year. The reason is simple. If you look at the of houses in Nigeria that get burnt, look at what happened in Kano, a whole market was off, quantify that we will be talking of billions, so many things, even in Lagos, look at Kontagora building, the one at Marina, in Lagos; that building alone cannot not be less than N4-5 billion. The building was up in flames so many things even in federal government institutions. There are some federal government institutions that believe in quality installations which we are working for currently. They now believe that we cannot just invest money and people will do fake, so they had to look for us and we are doing quality jobs for them. As earlier said, the quality and product selection matters in installation, anybody can do the job but not everybody can do quality work.
From your experience in the industry, are Nigerians really safety conscious? And what is your take on the policies and programs of the current administration, has it encouraged businesses so far?
Thing that they need to do is more advocacy, if they do more advocacy, people would be aware. Safety awareness we are talking here is just about being informed, majority of the corporate organisations are very much aware because they do a lot of fire drills, they do a lot of conferences, but at the same time they still need to do more.
Anywhere they ask me to talk on safety, anywhere I have a conference either here or there, do you know what I do, I tell them if people are not safe at home, they can’t be safe at work place. That’s why safety begins at home. Safety is not only where you work and it’s everywhere. So the awareness, the advocacy has to continue, and therefore government can do better.
Do you know what made the fire in the UN building not to be more than that, it’s the hydrant system, the sprinkler that was installed in the UN building, do you know what the sprinkler does, it helps or protect the integrity of the building because when that fire happened, what happen was that the sprinkler head broke and there was water everywhere, and that water doused the tension of the fire. Some of the federal government building that is not protected with fire sprinklers it’s very funny, you have high rise buildings everywhere and it’s not protected, even the one that is installed with this sprinklers, they are not maintained. To me if they had sprinklers in Kontagora building, that fire won’t have happened. Because what it does is that at the rise of heat, the sprinkler head will break, so immediately that happens the pump start pumping water and it has to be monitored and maintained.
Those are the reasons why toy see that they need to ensure that there is enough protection. If the federal government can do that it will be very good. But you see, they would just do the budget today and a lot of them will still come and do the bidding.
Do you know why I don’t bid again, they will ask you to pay N100,000 for bidding fee, they will collect N100,000 from over one million people, and that’s almost N10billion, the job will not be given, and even if it want to be given, it will be given to another person, and the money you contributed is the money they will use to do it, it’s very funny because you are even contributing money to do their jobs that they won’t even give to you. They will just collect money and give to your competition. So far business wise, what is helping us is not government, the private sector are the ones helping us because every private sector believes that they must protect their investment. If fire happens, they will be the one to loss not the federal government that is why they protect their equipment very well. The government has not helped us in that regard, but the only state that has really helped us is the Lagos State government.