Fire gutted a section of Binukonu Ultra Modern Market, Ojota in Lagos in the early hours of Friday, destroying goods and property worth millions of Naira. According to reports, this is the third fire incident at the market in three years. Previous incidents occurred in 2015 and November 2017.
Friday’s fire, which was believed to have been caused by an electrical fault, started at 1.30am and razed over fifty stalls in the market. At 4.10am when the NAN correspondent arrived at the scene, firefighters who came with two trucks from the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency were seen putting out the fire, which was still raging.
Panicky traders at the Ojota market tried to salvage their goods in their shops from the approaching fire.
Alhaja Rehanat Salami, the female Head of the market (Iya-Oloja) said that the fire was caused by an electrical fault.
She said,
“I didn’t look at the time when I received a phone call that the market was burning when I hurriedly started coming here.
“When the fire occurred on the two previous occasions, we did everything the government instructed us to do.
“When the fire occurred the first time, the government helped us to reconstruct the affected stalls for free.
“I heard that this fire was caused by an electrical spark, I had warned everyone to always turn off their electricity connections when there is a power outage.
“We make sure we put off all the lights when we close for the day at the market.”
The secretary of the market, Mr. Gbenga Fayemi revealed previous efforts the management of the market had made to prevent a reoccurrence of a fire outbreak.
“This fire that occurred just now is the third time that it is occurring,the first was three years ago and the last one occurred last year.
“The traders had not fully recovered from the previous incidents when this one occurred despite all our efforts to prevent a reoccurrence.
“When the first incident occurred Honourable Rotimi Agunsoye of the House of Representatives gave us some firefighting equipment.
“When the second incident occurred, we tried using the equipment but it didn’t quench the fire.
“I also installed the equipment in all these shops that got burnt because I was told that the equipment will burst and stop the fire when a fire begins but I was surprised that it did not work today,” he said.
Fayemi said the fire services did not arrive at the scene till about 2.30am which was an hour after the first call was made to alert them about the blaze.
