PETER CUNLIFFE-JONES, Lagos | Wednesday
IN a country where building maintenance has rarely been a priority and concern for public safety often appears minimal, the disaster in Lagos this week was an accident just waiting to happen, analysts said on Wednesday.
“I can hardly find a justification for keeping materials of such an explosive nature in a populated area,” said Senator Jonathon Zwingina, chairman of the Senate information committee, three days after a weapons store blew up scattering ordnance over a city of more than 10-million people.
“It is very, very unwise that ammunition depots or armouries should be kept near civilian-populated areas,” he said.
“But that is how it is,” he added. “It get as it be,” in Nigerian parlance.
More than 600 people, most of them children, died in the stampede that followed the explosion late on Sunday of the arms depot in the sprawling Ikeja military barracks.
The devastating impact of the explosion was the result of two things. Firstly the fact that the munitions store was so badly maintained that a fire nearby could spark a series of explosions. And secondly, the proximity of heavy-calibre weapons suitable for waging war, so close to densely populated civilian areas.
“To have such a huge stockpile of heavy weapons there shows what a lack of concern there is about the safety of ordinary people,” said Clement Nwankwo, a prominent human rights lawyer and critic of the military.
Army representative Colonel Felix Chukwuma on Tuesday told BBC radio on Tuesday the accident in Lagos could have happened anywhere in the world.
Western military experts were sceptical. “Firstly, if you are going to have weapons like this somewhere, you store them properly, and most people, in Africa, in the west, and elsewhere, do so.
“Secondly, you never put any of this stuff within ten miles of a major population centre,” one said.
The two houses of parliament on Tuesday announced the setting up of inquiries into the disaster. The Senate defence committee’s inquiry is supposed to discover the exact toll and cost of the tragedy and work out who was at fault.
President Olusegun Obasanjo, a former military ruler elected as a civilian in 1999, has also set up his own military inquiry run by an army board.
Nwankwo said the cause of the accident, assuming as most do that it was an accident, was clear: neglect.
“You think about the damage done to public buildings and bridges all over this city by the shaking we had on Sunday. There are cracks in roads and bridges everywhere.
“What chance do you think there is that anyone will inspect and repair until things fall down.
“We never do anything until the last minute, until disaster strikes,” he said.
Lagos State Governor Bola Tinubu on Monday was quick to absolve the civilian government of responsibility and blame the military for what had happened.
But radio commentators said late on Tuesday the attitude of the military to maintenance of the store and the dangers posed by such weapons was a reflection of government levels of concern.
“This is not a country where the leadership is ever held accountable, local, national, civilian or military, so people will get away with this,” said one radio commentator.
Charles Dokubo, a researcher with the government-funded Nigerian Institution of International Affairs (NIIA), agreed and said it was obvious the weapons stored there for years should have been moved.
“It’s not the best to have instruments of war near built-up areas,” he commented. – AFP