Ibadan Explosion Ravaged 58 Houses – NEMA
The National Emergency Management Authority (NEMA) has said no fewer than 58 houses have been confirmed affected by Tuesday’s explosion at Dejo Oyelese Street, Adeyi Avenue, Old Bodija in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital..
The Director-General (DG) of NEMA, Mustapha Ahmed, made the disclosure, on Wednesday, when he paid an assessment visit to the scene of the incident.
He said: “About 58 houses are damaged, about three lives have been lost, we currently don’t know the number of people that are in hospital. We are working hand in hand with the state government to ascertain the whole situation. This is the EOC center, so reports are still coming in and people are still on site working, but most importantly we cannot condone people going in there, it’s not acceptable.
You do not talk about what you intend to do without having the report of what the assessment is. We need to verify and ascertain what exactly has happened, the magnitude and the extent. Definitely NEMA will intervene, the Federal Government will come in. That is why we are here, we are awake, nobody has slept,” Ahmed disclosed.
He noted that President Bola Tinubu as well as officials of the Authority have lost sleep since the report of the incident, saying until the assessment, and search and rescue efforts are completed, no one would be able to ascertain the actual number of those who were injured, and that NEMA would do the needful immediately all casualties and extent of damage have been fully ascertained.
The DG said: “Search and rescue is still ongoing, this is something that occurred last night and as we speak we are still on ground zero. That is why that place needs to be evacuated so that people don’t step on other people, because search and rescue has not been concluded.”
Expressing dismay at how individuals could have stored up such explosive devices in residential areas, the DG wondered why no one could have noticed or sighted anything suspicious until the incident.
He noted: “We have seen documents, personal belongings of the people there for now, we don’t know what exactly is there. The most disturbing thing is that these particular people with the explosives have been there for a very long period of time and how come people have been keeping that quantum of explosives over ten years and nobody has seen anything?”
Regulatory bodies must all sit up, where we have people keeping piles of explosive in a residential area is not acceptable. Disaster management is everybody’s business, if you see something, say something. The regulatory bodies must ensure that nothing like this happens again,” the NEMA DG affirmed.
