Sunday morning inferno razes Abuja’s building materials market

ABUJA: A fire outbreak has destroyed shops and goods reportedly worth millions of Naira at Eda Plaza, a building materials market located opposite Chida Hotel in Jabi, Abuja.

An eyewitness was quoted by the Nigerian Television Authority NTA as stating that the alarm was raised around 3am on Sunday when his brother-in-law, who owns two shops and a packing store within the affected plaza, received a distress call from a colleague at the market.

National Public Relations Officer and Head, Corporate Services at the Federal Fire Service, Deputy Controller of Fire Paul Abraham, who confirmed the incident to Vanguard, said a distress call about the fire, identified as the Eda Plaza fire, was received at 2:46am.

He said the Federal Fire Service, alongside the Federal Capital Territory FCT Fire Service, turned out with appliances from its Wuse, Interior Ministry, and Garki stations to battle the blaze, and that a stop message was issued at 10:14am, signaling that the fire had been brought under control.

Abraham added that investigations into the remote and immediate causes of the fire were currently underway.

Earlier, the eyewitness said there were no casualties in the incident.

He said, “We were at home this morning, as early as 3 am, and my brother-in-law received a call from one of his colleagues here in the plaza that the plaza was on fire. So we had to rush down there. On getting here, we discovered that the situation was so bad”.

By the time they arrived at the scene, the eyewitness said, the fire had already spread extensively, leaving only one of his brother-in-law’s two shops standing.

“In this plaza, my brother-in-law had two shops and a packing store. Unfortunately, only one of the shops was saved. The other shop and the packing store were totally damaged by the fire,” he added.

The eyewitness put the value of roofing materials lost in the blaze at over N20 million, lamenting that some of the destroyed materials had been freshly installed the night before the incident.

“Over here, you see some of the roofs that we still have here. We are talking about a roof that is worth over N20 million lost in this fire,” he said, adding, “Because the other shop, we had roofs that were just restocked last night. And then the packing store also, we had roofs that were just restucked last night.”

Notwithstanding the heavy losses recorded, the eyewitness said he was consoled that the incident claimed no casualties.

“In our situation, we give thanks to God that no life was lost in this situation,” he said.