The Borno IDP camp fire outbreak

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THE Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp in Muna Alamdari in Maiduguri, Borno State, was recently involved in a fire disaster which reportedly claimed two lives and caused the destruction of 1050 houses. The inferno swept through the camp and it took fire service personnel over one hour to bring it under control. The Director-General of the Borno State Emergency Management Agency, Dr Barkindo Muhammad, acknowledged the contributions of the IDPs, the Civilian Joint Task Force, security agencies and some good Samaritans in putting out the fire. And in the aftermath of the incident, no less than 6000 IDPs had to sleep in the open, at the mercy of elements after their houses had been razed. Fire at Muna camp is said to be a yearly occurrence that happens at the onset of the harmattan and torches many houses across the about 7000-capacity camp. This is one of the reasons the incident is disturbing because the implication is that even if it was more or less an accident, it was largely predictable, but nothing was done to prevent it or mitigate the risk.

The recurrent fire outbreaks and its sloppy management over time speak to the wobbly state of governance of public spaces and interests in the country. Yes, emergencies and accidents do occur, but repeated occurrences do not qualify as such, thus calling into question the nature and quality of the efforts made by the government and those in charge of the IDP camp to prevent perennial fire outbreaks. One of the significant characteristics that distinguish humans from the lower animals is the tendency of the former to strive to control their environment by refusing to accept certain occurrences as a fait accompli, as the latter are naturally wont to do. The repeated fire incidents at Muni camp do not bring to the fore or manifest the expected superior grip on the environment, especially on predictable occurrences. And that is most unfortunate. It is therefore imperative that the government and the authorities in charge of the camp put in place effective strategies to stave off this avoidable perennial loss. It is not unlikely that the careless actions of some of the residents of the camp contribute significantly to the perennial fire outbreaks which necessarily have to be curbed, but we would expect that effective monitoring and supervision by the relevant authorities would help to lower and minimise such contributory factors.

It is hoped that the monumental losses to the perennial fire outbreaks are significant enough to get both the government and residents to work to ensure that henceforth, everything is done to forestall a recurrence. For starters, a thorough but humane official monitoring and supervision of the IDPs activities is recommended because these Nigerians did not leave their natural habitats of their own volition, but circumstances forced them to do so, and consequently, quite a few of them might be prone to errors as they might not be in their proper frame of mind at all times. And it will amount to double jeopardy for those who fled their homes to IDP camps in order to avoid being killed, maimed or kidnapped by violent non-state actors to be exposed to veritable but largely avoidable danger due to official negligence and/or sloppiness.

We sympathise with the victims and mourn the dead, even as we repeat our charge to the authorities to address the perennial fire outbreaks in the camp. It is evident that there is something not being done right, and that wrong thing must be identified and corrected very swiftly in order to obviate the embarrassing and destructive recurrent fire incidents in a public facility designed to temporarily provide sanctuary to vulnerable Nigerians who escaped from another disaster. It is worthy of note that residents of IDP camps are already contending with numerous inadequacies such as space constraints and, more significantly, their inability to reenact their routine activities as economic actors, especially in the camps. Therefore, making them to feel unsafe or experience safety issues in the camp will further exacerbate their sense of deprivation. This is avoidable and should be avoided.

Ultimately, the IDPs need to return home: it was insecurity that took them to the camp in the first place. The government has to be sufficiently concerned about the security situation that creates IDPs and double down on its efforts to contain acts that result in insecurity in the country. It is anomalous that some Nigerians are nearly permanently displaced within their own country for reasons connected to human errors rather than irreversible natural disasters. Official actions have to be necessarily increased and expedited to ensure the restoration of normalcy so that the IDPs can return home. Put more pointedly, the State must up its ante and rein in the terrorists, bandits and other criminals whose atrocious activities birthed the IDPs so that these Nigerians can safely return to community life which they had hitherto enjoyed with their kith and kin before the outlaws came to disrupt peace and tranquility in their communities. It is bad enough that rather than deploying its supposed monopoly of violence to stymie the activities of outlaws, the government yielded the ground to them, leading to the emergence of IDPs. But it is even worse that IDP camps, the supposed sanctuaries under the state’s watch, are becoming nearly as unsafe and insecure as the communities where the traumatised Nigerians fled from.

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