Goods and properties worth millions of naira were yesterday destroyed in a fire which gutted parts of the popular New Benin Market, Benin City. The cause was unknown as at the time of this report...
More than 50 shops stocked with household and food items, which stretched from Eki-Edo Street were affected by the inferno, with about 10 shops burnt beyond recognition by the time the fire service got to the scene.
At the scene, men of the Supply and Transport Unit of Nigerian Army were seen putting out the flames, which still emanated from some of the goods.
Traders whose shops were affected by the inferno wailed uncontrollably as they moved to salvage what was left of their means of livelihood, and youth from the community joined the soldiers to put out the fire in some of the shops not badly affected.
One of the traders, Ignatus Nnabuefe, who deals in baking materials, told journalists that he was at his shop in the morning to drop some goods he just bought, after which he decided to go home after the compulsory morning's sanitation exercise in the market, only to be called back minutes later that his shop was on fire.
"And by the time I came here, everything I owned was gone; I was not able to retrieve anything from the fire, not even the goods I bought new this very morning to sell and which is very painful because I just dropped them there," lamented Mr. Nnabuefe.
Another trader who spoke amidst tears, Tochukwu Abieke, said her family lost everything they had laboured for, as they lost all the goods in their three shops which belonged to her, her mother, Lois, and her father, Patrick.
Omoregieva Gbajumo, the Oredo local government chairman, who was at the scene of the fire incident, praised the efforts of the community youth and traders who used their combined efforts in putting out the fire, thereby preventing it from spreading to other parts of the market.
Mr. Gbajumo promised that government will investigate the cause of the fire and also assured the traders who lost their goods of possible compensation.
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