NIGERIA’S COSTLY CONFLAGRATIONS

Every now and then, flames as from hell riotously and ruinously snake their way through a Nigerian market, leaving in their wake ashes, soot and loss. Each time the flames which have become too frequent for comfort cease, traders are left to rue their incalculable losses while the environment cups yet another gust of pollution to its guts.

What causes these frighteningly frequent fire outbreaks, what ill-wind drives them to select markets across the country, what arsonous folly informs their forceful forays into the fortunes of Nigerian traders especially during this post-2015 economic famine in Nigeria?

There have been whispers like a witch`s casting a spell; there have been copious but credulous chats about how the fires are not at all inadvertent; of how they are painstakingly planned and premeditated, falling from high places like on Sodom and Gomorrah from biblical times.

Nigeria has a Federal Fire Service which is just but another lumbering luminary of Nigeria`s burdensome bureaucracy. Statistics indicate that between 2020 and 2021, a total of 4,541 calls were made to the agency nationwide and 378 rescue emergencies were recorded.

To witness the fire-fighting vehicles of the agency in full flight is a thing of wonder. The frenzy and lightning speed in the throes of an emergency is simply cinematic.

Its aesthetics are sure to inspire children to aspire to join the service just the way the rigorous discipline and smart uniforms of Nigeria`s security agencies appeal to many kids who join only to find out in the forbidding forests of Northeast Nigeria when confronted by killers bearing superior artillery, that all along they were sirens luring them to death.

There have been allegations and counter allegations that the fires are mostly the fiery fruits of arson directed at sections of the country who hold more interest than most in Nigerian markets.

But to say as much would draw accusations of stoking the embers of Nigeria`s supposedly smoldering ethnicism like a magnet from the choir of those specialty is to cry wolf when there is none.

But the statistics from the Federal Fire Service remain fiery: 31 market fires in 18 months with Lagos, Anambra States topping the list, and a staggering loss of N41.54 billion to go with it.

Even in a country of suspect statistics where data is subservient to dereliction and manipulation, these figures freeze the blood. In many ways, Nigeria is a country on fire and only Nigeria`s many denialists would describe this as alarmist. While Boko Haram razes communities in the Northeast, the IPOB and the federal government spar over the provenance of the fires eating up the offices of the Independent National Electoral Commission and police stations in the Southeast.

While they are at their ugliest, Nigerians feel fire in their bones kindled by insecurity and fanned into unaccountably destructive flames by poverty. What can be done about the wild fires spreading through Nigeria, especially through its countryside? What can be done about the flames incinerating vulnerable communities at the hands of Boko Haram, bandits and gruelling poverty?

What can be done about those who deliberately set these fires by their uncontrollable avarice and proceed to find perverse pleasure in holding the feet of Nigerians over the fires?

Those are without doubt the most dangerous saboteurs of the Nigerian project. Unless the flints are ripped off their fingers, Nigeria will continue to reap a bountiful harvest of costly conflagrations.

Kene Obiezu,

keneobiezu@gmail.com