Fire burns down FCT minister's residence

According to the PUNCH, a fire on Sunday completely destroyed Dr. Mariya Mahmoud's private apartment in Asokoro, the FCT's Minister of State.

Our correspondent received confirmation of the occurrence from Amiola Adebayo, the Acting Director of the FCT Fire Service.

According to Adebayo, the fire totally destroyed the building's first story.

He clarified that the fire had begun at approximately 9:45 a.m., but added that the Service officers had only just arrived at the scene a few minutes earlier, having received a running call from responders who had attempted to get in touch with the Federal Fire Service.

A running call indicates that responders insisted on going to the office to speak with firefighters rather than phoning the Fire Service's Emergency number.

“The fire was discovered a few minutes to ten, maybe around 9:45 am. We received a running call around thirteen minutes after ten, so we followed the person who came to call us to the fire scene.

“All of them were on the ground floor. They did not discover the fire on time, and they didn’t call the Fire Service. It was a running call that came to us. From our findings, they say they called the Federal Fire Service, but they didn’t respond on time, that’s when the running call came to our office.

“On reaching there, we saw that the first floor, the upper floor was completely engulfed in fire. So what we could do is just to prevent the fire from spreading to the ground floor, and the adjacent structures. No lives lost”, he said.

The minister's media assistant, Austin Elemue, verified the event, but the source of the fire was still unknown at the time this story was filed.

Source