For Nigeria’s Federal Fire Service FFS, the saying is through that “when everyone else is running out, the firefighters are running in”.
This is often the case when there is a fire incident, but in spite of the sacrifices, including losing lives and limbs that firemen and women have often made, the Nigerian society has not really paid adequate attention to the Federal Fire Service. Perhaps, this is why apart from scores of lives that were lost, over N5 trillion was also lost to inferno between 2013 and 2018. This is according to official statistics given by the Service during the 2018 Fire Fighters Day in Abuja. Of course, the losses also preclude those that were not reported to the Service.
The Federal Fire Service was established by the Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974 with a mandate to extinguish, control and prevent fire, carry out search and rescue operations, save lives, property and environment, including carrying out humanitarian services.
There is no gainsaying the fact that fire incidents contributed to the current wave of insecurity as many of those affected were not only displaced, but lost their sources of employment and income. By implication, fire safety is a security issue, but unfortunately in many states of the federation where the Federal Fire Service exists, the organization is not part of the State Security Council.
But, how did Nigeria get here? For the past 30 years, the Service existed without appropriate fire fighting equipment at the federal level. While the situation at the federal was before now very precarious, the state fire services literally existed only in the imagination of their state governors.
