Nigeria: Army has no plan to move weapons dump
Despite growing public anger, Nigeria’s army today appeared to reject a plan to move a weapons dump from the crowded Lagos suburb where more than 1,000 people are missing, feared dead, after a series of huge explosions.
Army spokesman Colonel Felix Chukwumah today said he was ‘‘not aware’’ of any plans to relocate the base, and said a decision could only be taken after a lengthy internal military inquiry.
‘‘Before the board of inquiry finishes its task, it would be pre-emptive to speak about moving,’’ he said.
Sunday night’s explosions in the heavily populated northern suburb of Ikeja caused devastation. Shrapnel flattened neighbourhoods and windows were shattered six miles away at the international airport.
Some reports put the death toll far higher than officials have confirmed.
The Vanguard newspaper said journalists, who visited two Lagos hospitals, counted more than 3,000 bodies on the ground inside the mortuaries.
The Nigerian Red Cross today said 1,100 people were still missing. There were fears that badly decomposing bodies left in ill-equipped mortuaries could lead to a disease epidemic sweeping through West Africa’s biggest city.
Defence Minister Yakubu Danjuma said the dump was built decades ago when few people lived in the area. Since then, it had been ‘‘swallowed up by the metropolis and it has become an inappropriate location’’.
‘‘We will relocate,’’ he added.
Danjuma said the military had launched a private inquiry, although Lagos state governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu and other politicians have accused the army of negligence and called for a public investigation into the disaster.
Parliament voted to ask President Olusegun Obasanjo not to travel overseas until the reasons for the blast become clearer.
‘‘The House should ask the president to show some respect and concern for families of the victims and not to travel until the last bomb has exploded,’’ said MP Nduka Irabor.
Sadness turned to anger against the military as distraught families today continued searching for missing loved ones.
Many of the hundreds of dead were women and children who drowned after plunging into a canal while fleeing. Some residents said lives could have been saved if authorities had built more bridges over a five mile section of the canal where there is only one crossing.
