The Federal Fire Service (FFS) says it is training children in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to effectively fight small fires during emergencies.

The training, headed by Acting Controller General of Fire (CGF), Samson Karebo, kicked off on Saturday at FFS headquarters, Abuja, and had no fewer than 60 children from different schools in attendance.

Karebo said that the aim of the early age training was to impact the knowledge of firefighting and advocate for children as first-hand volunteer responders in small fire emergencies.

“The essence of initiating the ‘Fire Children’ agenda is to educate children on fire safety awareness and its preventive measures so that they could impart the knowledge to their parents and schoolmates.

“The service is using the children to encourage adults because we have realized the public has refused to listen to adult firefighters’ sensitizations,” he said.

Karebo noted that children have sing-song voices which got into ”our memory.”

He said that the children’s voices had a way of coming back at the right time on the right things to do.

“That is why we are applying this option to talk to ourselves on how to save the Nigeria economy,” he said.

The Acting CGF said that plans were underway to extend the training and sensitizations to primary and secondary schools across the country in order to reach out to children outside the FCT.

He said that the Service also had plans to liaise with the Ministry of Education to include fire safety education in the school curriculum.

He urged communities and their leaders to come together to establish temporary measures to tackle fire before the arrival of firefighters.

Karebo further appealed to citizens to desist from the attitude of attacking firefighters when attending to fire emergencies.

One of the participants of the training, 13 years old Kaylah Koko said that the training had given her the knowledge of how to prevent fire outbreaks.

She also explained the types of fire extinguishers for the different classes of fire and how to effectively use them to extinguish the fire.

Another student, Ugere Lydia, said that the training had made her bold and no longer scared of fire.

“When I see fire, I wouldn’t be scared but can fight fire with the use of an extinguisher especially car fire.

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“I have realized fire is a good servant because it is used in cooking but a bad master because it can destroy things.

“The advise I will give to my teachers, parents, and adults around are that they should buy fire extinguishers, and if they can’t buy the big ones, they can buy the small ones for car usage,” she said.