FEBRUARY 2, 2015
*ROUNDTABLE - From left: Bob Collymore, Chief Executive Officer, Safaricom, Kenya; Uto Ukpanah, Company Secretary, MTN; Segun Ogunsanya, CEO & Managing Director, Airtel Nigeria; Elias Masilela , Executive Chairman, DNA Economics, South Africa and Foluso Phillips, Chairman, Nigerian Economic Summit Group at the Africa Sustainable CEO Business Roundtable held at Intercontinental Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos.
Insurers, traders differ on cover for fire incidents By ROSEMARY ONUOHA
I
nsurance operators and traders are split over the lack of insurance cover to mitigate losses suffered by traders during fire incidents. Market fire disasters have become a recurring menace in Nigeria and it is estimated that the country loses over N50 billion from these fires every year. Recently some traders in the Balogun market, Lagos Island, suffered losses running into billion of
naira when a fire incident engulfed th the market on January 11 . Mr. Ogbonna, was one of the traders affected by the fire incident. He said the fire destroyed N35 million worth of shoes, which was delivered the previous day. Wailing uncontrollably, he screamed that part of the money was borrowed. Another woman, Mrs. Gbadamosi, an attendant in one of the shops, said that her employer had goods worth N27 billion in his containers to be offloaded on Monday, by the time
they got to the market, nothing was remaining. Some of the affected traders only just returned from their respective home towns, where they spent the Christmas and New Year break, only to be faced with the disaster. The impact of the fire incidents is being aggravated by lack of insurance cover for the goods. This, according to traders was because insurance companies in the country were unwilling to provide insurance cover for traders.
The traders, for instance, accused insurers of inserting frivolous clauses into insurance contracts which have made it entirely impossible for them to insure their businesses, whereas, insurers on their part insisted that the traders have consistently refused to embrace insurance as a reliable risk transfer mechanism. According to the Coalition of Markets and Traders Association in Lagos (CMTAL), the unwillingness of insurance firms to remove such clauses that prevent them from insuring is a major factor why losses incurred from fire disasters are always massive. Chairman of the Association of Igbo in Commerce (AIC), a part of CMTAL, Mr. Nnamdi Nwigwe said that the major reason why it appears as if traders refuse insurance as a risk transfer mechanism is due to the fact that such clauses have not been favourable to traders. Nwigwe said, “Some things which insurance companies demand that we put in place are beyond us, rather these are things which the government should provide for the people. For instance, some insurance companies require a fire service station to be located in the market before they can insure our businesses, but such things are things that only the government can provide. The fact that traders are not insuring is partly the fault of insurers and the government because some facilities that should have been provided by government so that insurance can come in, cannot come because these facilities are not there. So where such facilities are lacking, insurers have abandoned us to our fate rather than designing products that will suit our peculiar needs.� Reacting to the position of the traders, Managing Director of Linkage Assurance Plc and Chairman of Nigerian Insurers Association, NIA, Mr. Godwin Wiggle, said that market traders jettisoned insurance by refusing to pay premium because they see the premium as too expensive. Wiggle said, “The market traders have refused to pay premium because they say that the premium is too expensive. But if you compare what they lost to the Balogun inferno, it is no way near what they would have Continues on page 22 C M Y K