A fire at a government secondary school, Bwalbwang, Gindiri in Plateau state in northern Nigeria, has killed 26 young Christian female students.
Twenty-three of the students died during the fire at their hostel, while three others died at the Jos University Teaching Hospital after being admitted for burns.
The fire broke out on the night of Monday, March 5. By Wednesday, the remains of 23 students, burnt beyond recognition, had been retrieved from the ruins of the hostel. They were buried in a mass grave a few meters away from the hostel.
Dr Daniel Iya, chief medical director of the hospital, told ENI that two other students were in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), while four more were recuperating in one of the hospital wards.
The school's principal, Hudung Mara, told ENI that she and her teachers had been unable to rescue the students because the fire was "ferocious and uncontrollable."
"Even as some of [the bodies] were being carried out, they were breaking into pieces like dried wood," she said.
Mara said rescue efforts had been hampered because of security measures at the hostel. All the doors were securely locked. The windows had protective bars to stop intruders. A few students escaped through an opening made at the rear end of the hostel by the rescuers.
"We were holding a night vigil which started at about 8 p.m. shortly after prayers," said one of the surviving students, Manyit Maichibi. "You see, after the prayer we all felt like singing and making ourselves happy. We were holding the dance and singing outside the dormitory, but within the fence." Maichibi said a local boy came and asked if he could join in, but the girls refused, saying "the place is only for girls."
According to the student, the girls then went back into the hostel to sleep. But she said that while others were sleeping, she and her friend were discussing a Bible passage when they heard shouts of "fire, fire."
"We thought the person was dreaming. Then we went to the corridor and saw the fire in a room beside the door and it was difficult to cross. Some of us went back inside towards the bathroom. We went to the bathroom window and waited because it was burglar-proof. We saw our teachers. They broke the wall. It was from there that we escaped," Maichibi said.
Parents of some of the students told ENI of their great sadness over the way in which the students had died. They said that if proper emergency exits had been installed in the hostel, the deaths could have been avoided.
Joshua Dariye, governor of Plateau State, said the "calamity" was on "a monumental scale. Not only are we stunned beyond measure, I feel something unusual and beyond human comprehension happened here. This nasty event, which claimed the lives of innocent students who were fulfilling their obligation to God, was nothing short of the practical manifestation of the devil's work."
The Bwalbwang School tragedy | What makes the disaster most tragic is not only that the manner of death was horrible, but that the high fatality was preventable. - Editorial, The Nigerian Guardian (Mar. 14, 2001)
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