Palliatives Stampede: Somebody Should Account For Loss Of Lives – Ojukwu

A retired Commissioner of Police, Dr Emmanuel Ojukwu, has said somebody should be held accountable for the loss of Nigerian lives for nothing during the stampede at the distribution of palliatives in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, Oyo and Anambra states.

Ojukwu, a security consultant who said this when he appeared as a guest on Arise Television Morning Show, said the recent tragedies in Abuja, Oyo, and Anambra states were the result of the hunger in the land, which elicited the psychology of scarcity.

“Normally, it is said that when you fail to plan, you have a plan to fail. A major event such as this must have factored in all the stakeholders. The stakeholders are those who manage events based on the nature of that event. It is a major event; people are hungry, and they want to get food.

“That some people are going for palliatives means that they are hungry. Not everybody goes for that. We must not deny hunger in the land. It is there recorded. Now, if you want to give something as a palliative to bring it down, you need to plan. Right now, I’m in Alimoso. You want to give food to people in Alimoso, where you have millions of people, and then you use a small stadium that will take 50, as the case may be.

“No, you need to look for a better venue. You have entry and exit points; in that venue, you have a communication network. Those outside will communicate with those inside. In that venue, you have distribution points; in that venue, you give numbers to people. As in the case of Anambra, you have 3000 coming. Nothing stops you from staggering it. On Monday, women should come; on Tuesday, men should come; on Wednesday, children; on Thursday, people with disability should come.

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“Space it would so that you will be able to manage it and then have people in that particular venue to help those who may fall sick as they are hungry; some may be sick. They need medical assistance, and you need an ambulance to rescue them there and evacuate them to the hospital. You need those to apply first aid. Nigerians must not die over what we can prevent. We can prevent it,” he said.

Ojukwu stressed that the Nigeria Police must be involved in such exercises as crowd control, which falls within the ambit of its legal duties to protect the lives and property of the citizenry.

“If the police are involved in the programme because it is their job to make sure we maintain public safety. It is part of Section 4 of the Police Act. It is their job to protect lives and property. Wherever lives are in Nigeria, the police must be involved. And somebody should be held accountable for this loss of Nigerians’ lives for nothing,” he noted.

Another guest on the programme, President of Environmental Protection and Climate Change Practitioners Air Vice Marshall Akugbe Iyamu, linked the tragedy to the World Bank’s prediction that hunger in Nigeria at the end of 2024 would be 40.1%.

“The World Bank predicted that hunger at the end of 2024 in Nigeria was going to be 40.1%, and we have seen that in the 63 people that died, it is going to be like that. And the global hunger index also placed us at 110-127, which was profiled. So climate is going to affect hunger in the land. You have the case of a dam collapse in Maiduguri. Now, Maiduguri is a tomato bed; you can see how it was. How are we going to deal with that?

“You see, the budget they are having now is not really going to address it. If you have N250,000 per individual for the budget, no. Also, giving stipends is not going to deal with it because stipends don’t alleviate poverty.

“If we go by way of the budget, we will take a century to alleviate poverty. What we need to do is to make sure that we strengthen SMEDAN so that what alleviate poverty are industries that can take 50 people, 100 people, and that is what we need to do,” he said.

For his part, the Anambra state commissioner for information, Dr Law Mefor, said that following the incident, the state government will put in place a regulatory framework to forestall future occurrences, advising that existing structures be utilised for such events.

“Anambra state has 179 communities and, perhaps, a little more. Each of these communities has a union; they have villages, they have leadership, and you have ward leaders apart from the village head. So, ordinarily when a huge population is anticipated in matters such as this what should have been done is to utilise these existing structures.  This is what is on the ground, and this is what ought to have been utilised not just by Jackson but by any other person who should be sharing palliatives that are likely to attract a huge number of people; anything more than 100 persons is already.

“If you saw the press statement put out there by the Chief Press Secretary to the governor, you will see that that contemplation is already on that certainly, some kind of regulation will be put in place, going forward. It is necessary now, but as I said, individuals should also try to utilise structures that are already in place, as I mentioned. And the state certainly will do something. It is contained in the press issued the day the incidents happened.

“Government structure is coming, and it has to complement the existing structures, and people have access to those structures. There are people who shared palliatives in Anambra state before that followed these structures, and they were able to decentralise the process, and that will avoid stamped because that itself is a kind of crowd control. This is a crowd problem, not a problem of hunger. The government will come up with a regulatory framework, but even before that, people need to take advantage of town union structures, the ward structures, Ndi Igwe, and village structures, which will avoid something of this nature.

“There are numbers to call during emergencies, and there are statutory agencies in Anambra state as well that respond, depending on what happens. So, it is not as if Anambra state doesn’t have anything to respond to emergencies. That’s not correct. It depends on what the issues are.

“For example, what has happened in the case of Okija is that the palliative sharing of Obi Jackson is not quite peculiar because it is not an Anambra thing. It has happened in certain other places where crowd control issues were not put in place. It happened in Abuja… you learn from things like this and modify your processes to ensure better outcomes next time,” he stated.