Adaeze Aniamam
Not less than 30 people have been killed by generator fume in Nigeria in the past one year.
It is another side of the adversity that the country’s inability to generate and transmit enough electricity constitutes against the polity.
Other aspects of the hazards people experience border on socio-economic losses that make them spend avoidable huge amounts on fuel and repairs, a scenario that has killed many businesses and sent others out of Nigeria.
Generators also do explode and inflict tragedy on the people.
But another sore side is the one occasioned by inhaling of generator fume by suspecting and, at times, careless occupants of various abodes.
While another incident has just happened in Umuromumu, Imo State, killing six wedding guests, phenomenal.com.ng’s survey revealed that over 30 lives have been lost in cases reported between June 2018 and now.
On June 25, 2018, in Benin, for instance, the family of Pastor Ugochukwu Ike was said to have put on a generator in their kitchen, with the fumes from it reportedly leading to the death of the wife and five children.
On October 25, 2018, tragedy struck in Mokwa, Niger State, as five members of a family of eight died after apparently inhaling carbon monoxide from the generator while they were asleep at their residence.
Also, on August 16, 2018, five members of a family of six in Igboetche community in Rivers State were killed by generator fume. The incident was said to have taken the lives of one Andrew Monye, his wife and three of their four children.
It was gathered learnt that the family had put on their generator and left it in the bathroom before going to bed.
The year closed on a terrible note for a mother and her four children as they died on December 1, 2019, at the Obefemi Awolowo Teaching hospital, Ile-Ife, after they inhaled a generator fume.
This avoidable deaths have moved safety and security personnel to occasionally sermonise on the need for people not to leave generators on overnight or to keep such in a far distance.
“Safety matters should come above comfort,” a security expert, Adeagbo Owoyemi, told phenomenal.com.ng. “Generator fumes are killers. They kill slowly, they kill instantly. That is why, apart from those who often die overnight, there are those whose deaths had foundation in fumes they had inhaled over time.”
There has hardly been any year the country would not lose lives to the problem. In 2014, for instance, in the Bagido area of Ijede, Lagos, generator fume killed a man, his wife and five other members of his family.
The man whose name was given as Etim Edet was said to be an employee of Nigeria Brewery plc. The entire family died after inhaling smoke from the generator set reportedly mounted in the house.
Concerning the recent happening in Imo, reports said the six – some said up to 10 – people were killed by the fume from the generator, which ran through the night until morning.
The State Commissioner of Police, Rabiu Ladodo, who confirmed the incident, said, “The generator was on in the kitchen while the doors and widows of the rooms the guests slept were locked.
“It is a case of sudden and natural death but we have commenced an investigation. Assistance is being rendered to the survivors.”
