Market fire outbreaks: Challenges as Kano inaugurates appeal fund committee

Kano state government has on Monday inaugurated an appeal fund committee to raise funds for the victims of fire incidents that ravaged Sabon-Gari, Singer, Yankatako, Farm Center and Kurmi markets. The committee which is headed by a billionaire businessman Alhaji Aliko Dangote is expected to mobilize funds from federal and the 36 state governments as […]

Kano state government has on Monday inaugurated an appeal fund committee to raise funds for the victims of fire incidents that ravaged Sabon-Gari, Singer, Yankatako, Farm Center and Kurmi markets.
The committee which is headed by a billionaire businessman Alhaji Aliko Dangote is expected to mobilize funds from federal and the 36 state governments as well as corporate organizations within and outside the country for the victims.
Inaugurating the committee at Government House Kano, the state Governor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje said government had taken various measures towards assisting the affected traders, noting that the other committee set up for resettlement of the affected temporary traders at Sabon-Gari market had submitted its report.
“The committee has identify 7,000 shops for the resettlement of owners of temporary stalls in the market and government had agreed to pay N70m rent for one year. Traders will continue to pay for the subsequent years. Government will do everything within its power to assist the affected traders,” he said.
On the Dangote-led committee, Ganduje said the committee was expected to mobilize funds for the affected traders, identified the actual number of traders affected by the disasters and offer any useful recommendations that would prevent reoccurrence of the unfortunate disaster in the future.
The committee has only six week to submit its report to the government.
Responding, chairman of the committee, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, assured the government of the committee’s readiness to achieve the desired objectives.
“With the caliber of personalities as members of the committee, I can assure the governor, government and the people of Kano state that we will not fail in the assignment given to us. Despite the economic hardships, we will do our best to mobilize funds for the victims of the disasters.
“The disasters have touched our lives. We will use our connections to reach whoever we believe can assist and collect donation for the victims,” he assured.
However, while government was making frantic efforts to help victims of the disasters, Kano Chronicle findings revealed that there were some  challenges associated to the recent fire outbreaks in some markets in the state which also need to be addressed in order to prevent future occurrence of such incidences.
These include lack of adequate and serviceable fire fighting vehicles in our markets, non-availability of access roads, non-availability of water in and around the markets and blockage of the available access roads as well as nonchalant attitude of temporary traders among others.
Further findings indicated that apart from shortage of fire fighting vehicles in the state, the few that are available are too old to render the desired services. It was only Sabon-Gari market that has a single fire fighting vehicle while the rest have none.
While most of the markets in the state including Singer, Yankatako and Kantin-Kwari have no good access roads, in Sabon-Gari market, the access roads were taken over by temporary stalls. Apart from creating unnecessary congestion, the stalls which were largely made from woods had greatly aided the fire in the recent outbreak in the market.
Our reporters gathered that when fire fighters arrived at Sabon-Gari in their efforts to quench the fire, they could not gain access to some places within the premises of the market due to the blockage of access roads by temporary stalls.
Also, some traders, who dumped their goods on the major access roads after removing them from their shops, had halted the efforts of fire fighting officials in putting off of the fire in time.
A trader, Muhammad Sani Jogana, said: “I have relocated my goods to four different places before I finally gave up and allow the fire to burn them down. I first took them to my friend’s shop and when I realized that the fire will reach the shop, I quickly relocated the goods to another place. Still the fire followed me there, I relocated them to another place and yet it goes there and consumed the goods.”
Next to the blockage of access roads was lack of water reservoir in most of the markets in the state. Kano Chronicle observed during the recent Sabon-Gari market fire incident, fire fighting vehicles that were sent to the market to quench the fire had to travel to some far places before they could get water and a trip to the source of water was taking them to about an hour.
Government should therefore look into this problem with a view to addressing it once and for all. Kano Chronicle suggests that adequate water reservoirs should be constructed in all the markets in the state in case of any possible occurrence of fire incident.
Traders should also imbibe the culture of learning lessons from previous disasters. Kano Chronicle gathered that several fire incidences had happened in the state that include Yankatako, Kurmi and Singer markets’ fire outbreaks but traders do not take precautionary measures against such disasters.
A trader at the Sabon-Gari market, Auwalu Ibrahim said: “This is not the first time this market experienced fire outbreak, yet traders do keep huge amount of money in their respective shops. This is unwise.
“Some of them do keep hard currency in their shops; majority of the traders don’t patronize banks. And I am sure most of the shops in the market do not have fire extinguisher which in an ideal situation things should not be done this way.”
Consequently, it is apparent that both the Dangote-led appeal fund committee and traders as well should take into cognizance the aforementioned observations with a view to preventing future occurrence of such unfortunate fire incidence in our markets in the state.