About 15 shops with goods worth millions of naira have been completely razed down at Agbani Road, in Enugu South Local Government Area of Enugu State.
According to information obtained by newsmen, the incident occurred on Monday night.
The troubled stores were situated in the well-known Afor Awkunanaw Market, also called Garriki Market.
At around 11 p.m. on Monday, eyewitnesses told newsmen that a shopping center containing electrical stores, hair salons, phone accessories, a cafeteria, and motor/motorcycle parts caught fire.
Onyebuchi Omerie, one of the witnesses, claimed that if locals hadn’t hurried to the scene in time to assist in putting out the raging inferno, the entire building would have been completely destroyed.
Despite the fact that no one was able to pinpoint the exact cause of the blaze, Omerie noted that according to a number of accounts, the fire that destroyed the shopping center began as a fire started in the gutter that someone had lit before spreading to the building.
“I don’t know actually what caused the fire incident. I heard that someone set fire to a refuse in the gutter when they closed for business yesterday and the fire spread and caught the building that housed the shops. It was also said that the fire was caused by a Suya seller who probably did not put out the fire from his oven well,” a resident told newsmen.
He said that he lived close by and when he perceived the smell coming from the stalls, he thought that it was his generator that was producing the smoke only the discover that it was the shops that caught fire.
“I live nearby. When I perceived the smell in the night around ten or eleven in the night, I thought it was my generator but when I came out to find out, I saw the shops in flame,” the resident said.
He also said that when the Fire Service personnel came, they could not put out the fire because they lacked enough water.
“It was people that started bringing water from everywhere that were able to contain the fire from consuming the entire building,” he also said.
When our correspondent arrived at the scene of the incident, which was directly opposite Akwuke Junction, Agbani Road, sympathisers were busy trying to recover some goods from the wreckage while some others looked on aghast at the gory incident.
“What a tragedy that people should lose their source of livelihood this January and in this economic hardship,” a female sympathizer lamented.
Discussion about this post