Relationship Between Cost of Fire 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 determine the relationship between cost resulting from fire incidences and annual capital expenditure in Kwara State. The study’s background revealed that the incidence of fire outbreak increases annually, resulting to loss of lives and property worth huge amount of money. Data were collected from secondary source, which is from records of Kwara State 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 the variables studied. Major findings from the study showed that fire occurs due to electrical faults than gas faults; the amount of financial loss (=N=6,533,988,401.50) was about 4% of the capital expenditure (=N=178,347,461.00); and number of fire cases recorded correlated significantly with the amount of capital expenditure. It was concluded that there is no improvement in the trend of fire incidents in Kwara State over the study period.