By Philip Nwosu
Twenty years after the explosion of munitions inside the Ikeja Cantonment, resulting to the death of hundreds residents of Lagos, the Nigerian Army has commenced the final clearance of undernoted munitions scattered inside the cantonment.
The clearance commenced just as the Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Taoreed Lagbaja apologized to Nigerians on the incident of January 2002 where many Lagosians died.
General Lagbaja spoke whole flagging of the clearance exercise tagged EXERCISE CLEAN SWEEP, The objective of the exercise is to totally disinfect the epicenter of the Ikeja bomb blast and clear it of all verified and suspected remaining Unexploded Explosive Ordnance.
He said this would assist in putting the site to future safe and productive use by the force and the larger Ikeja community, adding that ,“the exercises of this nature are time and resource consuming, it has taken this long to finalize the clearance operation, not because of lack of will but because it requires long term planning and acquisition of relevant expertise and equipment.”
General Lagbaja, said that the initial clearance operation ensured some degree of safety in the Ikeja Cantonment and its environ, adding that the Army had recently discovered some unexploded explosive ordnances at the site of the 2002 blast raised the need for the Nigerian Army to carry out a follow up clearance exercise in Ikeja Cantonment and its environ.
He said that the Nigerian Army would thus conduct a clearance exercise that would last for 61 days, beginning from October 10, to December 10, 2023, and would involve mobilization of engineers’ plants and other necessary equipment.
He said that the recovered bombs would also be moved to the Nigerian Army Range at Ajilete in Ogun State,during this exercise, adding that the aftermath of the blast, the Nigerian Army, as a responsible organisation, wasted no time in conducting necessary clearance operations at the site of the explosion, which led to the recovery and disposal of the bulk of Unexploded Explosive Ordnance left behind.
Earlier the Commander Nigerian Army Corps of Engineers Major General Philip Eromosele,who is at the centre of the recovery of bombs, said, remnants of Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) from the site of the unfortunate incident of the 2002 Ikeja Cantonment bomb blast are being recovered by personnel of the corps.
He said that sequel to the occurrence, the NAE alongside other stakeholders carried out an initial clearance operation, and over 105 truck-load of bombs were recovered and disposed. However, other bombs buried in the ground were not recovered at the time.
He explained that, “recovery and disposal was in line with global best practices in explosive ordnance disposal, which requires that deeply buried unstable UXOs lie fallow for at least 15 years before recovery, adding that this period is known as soak time to allow the unstable bombss to stabilize as well as wash up towards the surface thereby enhancing safety and detection.