Lagos military base still unsafe, minister says

The main military barracks in Nigeria's commercial capital, Lagos, is still unsafe six months after a disaster that claimed hundreds of lives, the minister of state for defence in charge of the army said on Friday. The minister, Lawal Batagarawa, told reporters that because the Ikeja Military Cantonment was not yet safe, the government had been unable to rehabilitate buildings in the facility that were damaged when its munitions dump caught fire on 27 January, setting off massive explosions. More than 1,000 people died in the disaster. Most were women and children who drowned in a canal while fleeing mortar shells and other projectiles that fell on their neighbourhood. "The federal government has given directives that for safety and security reasons, the rehabilitation work on the buildings affected by the explosions should not start," Batagarawa said. He said military personnel still in the base would be relocated to other facilities within and outside Lagos. The minister was on a tour of the base in the company of the US ambassador to Nigeria, Howard Jeter, and officials of RONCO, a US contracting firm involved in the disposal of unexploded munitions that littered the base and surrounding areas. Jeter told reporters some 200,000 live munitions had been destroyed or were being disposed of by the US bomb disposal experts. He said the main centre of the blasts, the Ammunition Transfer Depot, "has been sealed off and will remain dangerous for the foreseeable future". Parts of the cantonment could still contain unexploded ordnance, Jeter added. The first phase of the bomb disposal exercise was conducted by a team of experts from the US military's European Command, assisted by some British colleagues, and ended in April. Code-named operation "Avid Recovery", its main objective was to stop unexploded heavy-calibre weapons from causing further damage. The second phase is expected to be completed by mid-August.