Uche Annie Okonkwo, former House of Representatives candidate for Idemili North and South federal constituency on the platform of Social Democratic Party (SDP), has lamented the havoc being caused by fire disasters in Anambra State, stressing that the government should ensure that it is prepared for such emergencies that can lead to disasters.
Okonkwo, in a statement made available to The NEXT EDITION on Monday in Lagos, lamented that incessant fire outbreaks in Anambra State had always come with grave costs to lives and properties of citizens.
He, therefore, called on the state government and people to rise together and halt the malady through a firm prevention mechanics than being reactive.
Okonkwo stressed: “Yes, fire outbreaks can be sporadic and spontaneous, deliberate or not, but they are certainly not unforeseeable. If it is a foreseeable disaster, we should be ready for the menace through a more robust curtailment and containment capacity, than reactive tokens and broad lamentations.”
Okonkwo stated that considering the costs of funds, the burdens of doing business, the time span of savings for business start-ups, and Nigerians’ peculiar dependent ratio to every breadwinner, “the preventable agony of seeing your livelihood go up in flames in minutes, makes the economics of prevention far cheaper and compelling, than the quicksand palliatives, most times unfulfilled, poorly administered, or even abandoned as memories grow thin.”
“I therefore call on the government of Anambra State as responsive as I believe they are, to as a matter of developmental necessity, to arrest and prevent any further situation as witnessed lately, and by so doing, restore confidence to our striving businesses and businessmen.
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“This they can do by taking data compliant inventory of major towns in our state with deposits of economic activities and wealth creation, and effectually planting a network of ready to go fire stations around them.
“That way enabled and priotised, our fire fighters as first responders, will within a max of five minutes, match to distress centres to actually overwhelm the fires than being tamed by same helplessness as the victims, a situation that unfairly compromise them to public rage as villains, than deserved gallantry.
“I feel sad as every other person, when confronted with the constant picture of fire fighters arriving late to the scenes of distress to confess being handicapped by lack of water, hydrants, failure of equipments, access to the arena, and poor public attitudes that conduce to fire.
“These are unfortunate as they are embarrassing, because, trading and commerce is to Anambra State what oil and gas is to Nigeria. It should command higher structured primacy, I really humbly submit.”
Okonkwo maintained that if the state government was constrained by funds to secure what he termed “the golden eggs of our people, their markets”, he would advocate strongly the setting up of a Fire Safety Trust Fund, where the synergy between the people and their government would be exploited to catalyse firmed efficiencies in fire fighting and containment.
“I will be a free and willing campaigner for such initiative and I know many will gladly do the same too. Because, if this is done transparently without politics and hubris, such institutionalised process will have the persuasive buy in by the mass of the traders, who through their legal market union executives will be sensitised to throw in their pinch to keep their pie,” Okonkwo added.
