We aspire to be pioneer manufacturer of fire equipment in Nigeria– MD Sagif Company
You are into sale of firefighting equipment. But we hear complaints from users of these equipment that they don’t work in emergency situations. Why is this so? Basically, in the area of fire extinguisher refilling, a lot of people go to the roadside technicians to refill their extinguishers. We normally advise them—because we have a […]
You are into sale of firefighting equipment. But we hear complaints from users of these equipment that they don’t work in emergency situations. Why is this so?
Basically, in the area of fire extinguisher refilling, a lot of people go to the roadside technicians to refill their extinguishers. We normally advise them—because we have a refilling plant at Idu at the moment where we refill fire extinguishers—we have been campaigning that people should not go to the roadside technicians but go to reputable dealers and engineers like us to refill their extinguishers. They can go there, refill carbon dioxide extinguishers, their DCP [dry chemical powder] extinguishers with a whole lot of confidence. And when the need arises for them to use these extinguishers, they can extinguish and put out the fire without any doubt.
But unfortunately, when extinguishers are refilled with yam powder, cassava powder—the client doesn’t know this. When the need arises for them to use the extinguishers, they find out that the extinguisher will not work!
You recently took delivery of fire fighting/prevention equipment. What are these equipment?
They are many but the most important of them is the self-contained breathing apparatus. We found out that when fire service personnel go into fire—the fire situation is such that we could have a complete shutdown of oxygen and fighters can get intoxicated and get drawn in smoke, so to avoid this, they need to get into the fire using a breathing aid. So what is highly recommended is a self-contained breathing apparatus. It is orthopedically designed with anti-static backplate made of a chemical and impact resistant moulded composite material. It has the capacity of sustaining one for 60 minutes.
What exactly do you do in the Idu factory?
It is basically an extinguisher refilling plant. People are encouraged to bring their empty bottles—when you buy an extinguisher, we don’t advise clients to every now and again change the extinguishers. No! they can refill them.
How do you source materials for the plant—locally or imported?
We don’t manufacture, they are imported. We get the materials from England, some from China, some from Germany and some from India.
Is it that we don’t have the resources or we lack the technology to locally produce?
It is not that we don’t have the technology but because we don’t do many things at the same time. But very soon, we are going to get there.
Many complain of difficulty in running a business in FCT. But you seem to have progressed steadily. What is your secret?
I think the main issue here is perseverance. We did not start big. We started small but we know that when a business continues and then you are focused and then people begin to show interest and then they believe in the quality of services…we have a lot of stakeholders who encourage us from time to time.
We have a range of passive fire prevention products. And then our parent company in England, Envirograf UK—everybody knows that they are a top class world manufacturers of passive fire prevention products. Sagif is the only accredited representative they have in Nigeria so people believe in our products and they tend to encourage us and that makes us much more focused.
What attracted you to this business?
The whole idea of fire safety management is to really ensure that the fire does not start in the first place. Because if fire starts, then you have given a job to the fire service to do. But if the fire is prevented from starting, I think that is the major thing. We are motivated by that—to make sure that the fire does not start!
The fire service has so much belief in us. They know that prevention is the best line of defence in fire prevention technology. They believe in our products and the public there too believe because fire will never announce its arrival. So there is the need for preparedness, as there is need for people to get ready, as they plan for their daily food, fire too will always come because all our activities are surrounded by fire. Fire as a good friend, is also an enemy! There is nothing we can do about it.
But preparations—making up our minds that there is need for us to prevent fire and that is why we have been campaigning—private individuals, corporations, telling them that for the 21st century, the best line of defence will forever be fire prevention and not firefighting.
Are our building engineers aware of this campaign?
Yes, we have been collaborating with architects, builders, developers because we know that…especially for the passive fire prevention range of our products, we found out that when an architect is designing, there is always the need for them to design safety into it. How will they do that? By incorporating passive fire revention products into the design at the drawing stage. Not when the building is standing.
In the next two, three years, what should we expect of Sagif?
We are looking forward to having an expanded base for our Idu refilling plant. We think of how we will begin to locally manufacture, work in partnership with people that can locally manufacture the materials that are required for extinguisher refilling so that we don’t have to bring the materials from overseas. We will be bigger employer of labour.