It has been a tale of woes for some Lagos residents and neighbourhoods, and businesses in recent times, as numerous fire incidents in the sprawling city have destroyed markets, buildings, vehicles, and in some cases, taken lives.
The latest of such happened this Tuesday morning at the Romona Trailer Park in the Ogere area of Ogun State, along Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, where several vehicles went up in flames following a tanker explosion.
Last Thursday also, an explosion occurred along Mobolaji Bank-Anthony Way in Ikeja involving a tanker laden with Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), which led to the loss of five lives and 25 vehicles burnt.
These unfortunate incidents and others before re-emphasising the need for an insurance policy, especially fire and genuine motor third-party insurances that can compensate for damage when and where they occur.
Operators in the insurance industry, who do not want their names mentioned, assure that insurers would always take up the bills if, as in the case of the tanker explosion, the vehicle had been properly insured. As at the point of this report, the validity of the insurance certificate for the exploded tanker was yet to be ascertained.
However, not known to many people, the nation’s insurance industry has continued to meet its expectation in terms of claims, despite the negative perception that trails the industry.
In 2019 alone, out of the N490.99 billion premiums generated, the operators paid out N330.37 billion in claims.
In the five-year period between 2014 and 2018, the industry, according to figures assessed from the Nigerian Insurers Association (NIA), paid out a total of N648.16 billion in claims, with life business accounting for N315.47 billion, while non-life or general business accounted for N332.69 billion.
However, a senior official in NIA told BusinessDay that there was no need for panic in the case of the recent explosion if the vehicle that caused the accident had genuine motor third-party insurance. He stated that fire and special peril accounted for the third largest claims paid in the industry annually, while motor accounts for the second largest after the oil and gas business.
Motor third-party policy, by the provision of the law in this kind of incident, covers all those who lost their lives and properties, as a result, provided the vehicle that caused the incident has genuine cover from a registered insurance company.
The coverage is also not limited to third party victims alone. Owners of the LPG tanker could as well get compensation for the vehicle if they had taken comprehensive cover, and also compensation for the exploded content if there was coverage for goods in transit.
According to the NIA official, motor third-party insurance for this class of vehicle is only N10,000 per annum but could do so much in events like this. For private vehicles, it is N5,000 per annum.
“The benefit of having a third-party insurance policy is huge because it protects against third-party damage, meaning that in the event of an accident occurring, the policyholder has a third party property damage limit up to N1 million and no limit to life in case of death or permanent disability,” the NIA official explained.
From January this year, Lagos has recorded fire incidents resulting from tankers going up in flames, or/and markets going into flames for various reasons.
As early as January 7, there was a fire incident involving a tanker near the DHL office on Apapa-Oshodi Expressway. This was followed by another incident at Alade Market in Shomolu, where 70 lock-up shops were destroyed.
In February and March, there were two fire incidents at Ido Train Terminus and Otedola Bridge, respectively. The Otedola Bridge incident involved a tanker that exploded.
There was a gas explosion in April at Iyasoko Street in Amuwo Odofin Local Government Area.
The month of May alone had three separate fire incidents. The first was the Oshodi Market fire, the cause of which was yet unknown. A tanker also caught fire at Banire on Ikotun Road in Alimosho LGA. The third was the fire incident at Oladipo Spare Parts Market where it was reported that goods worth billions of naira were destroyed by the inferno.
The challenge in all of these is the difficulty in ascertaining the real cost of the destroyed properties in monetary terms. Worse still, most of these burnt markets or vehicles do not have identifiable insurance cover that could compensate for the losses incurred by the victims.
“The frequency of these incidents and the enormity of destruction they leave in their trail underpin the need for the government to enforce compliance for the owners of high-risk vehicles to insure them. Leaders of market unions should also be compelled or persuaded to insure their facilities,” Godwin Okezie, an insurance broker, advised.
Okezie lamented that insurance penetration remained low in Nigeria, despite the large market, noting that the industry was still struggling to make an impact in the country after over 50 years in operations.
The LPG tanker explosion, which occurred about 11.45pm on Thursday in front of Sheraton Hotel and OPIC Plaza, left OPIC in ruins even though it was later put out by men of the Lagos State Fire Rescue Services and those of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Lagos State Emergency Management Agency (LASEMA), Nigerian Police, and other emergency responders.
“There were many shops and vehicles at the plaza that got burnt. Nobody knows yet whether or not these properties were insured. But I can bet you that over 70 percent of those properties did not have any insurance cover,” Okezie said.
