Relationship between Cost of Fire Incidence and Capital Expenditure in Kwara State

Abstract

The incidence of fire outbreak has been identified as a threat to both citizens and the Government which makes it a threat to National development. This study addressed the problem of incidence of fire outbreak, resulting to losses amounting to a sizeable proportion of capital expenditure in Kwara State. To solve this problem, this study set out to examine the relationship between cost resulting from fire incidences and annual capital expenditure in Kwara State. Background revealed that the incidence of fire outbreak increases annually, resulting to loss of lives and worth huge amount of money. Data were collected from secondary source, which is from records of Kwara fire service and National Bureau of Statistics. Bar and line graph was employed to carry out trend comparison of the variables studied, while regression and correlation analyses were used to determine the relationship between variables studied. Major findings from the study showed that fire occurs due to electrical faults than gas faults, the amount of financial loss (N6,533,988.401.50) was about 4% of the capital expenditure (N178,347,461.00); and of fire cases recorded correlated significantly with the amount of capital expenditures. It was concluded that there is no improvement in the trend of fire incidents in Kwara State over the study period.