A fire has destroyed several shops and goods at Chida Plaza, a building materials market in Jabi, Abuja.
The fire broke out in the early hours of Sunday, prompting traders to rush to the market as they tried to rescue their goods and belongings.
Footage from the scene shared by the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) showed shop owners removing goods from some affected shops while the fire raged through the plaza.
An eyewitness said the alarm was raised at about 3am after his brother-in-law, who owns two shops and a packing store at the plaza, received a distress call from a colleague.
He said they rushed to the market but found that the fire had already spread extensively.
According to the eyewitness, only one of his brother-in-law’s two shops was spared, while the other shop and the packing store were completely destroyed.
He estimated the value of roofing materials lost at more than N20 million, adding that some of the materials had been installed only the previous night.
Paul Abraham, national public relations officer of the Federal Fire Service (FFS), confirmed the incident.
Abraham said the FFS received a distress call about the fire at Chida Plaza at about 2:46am and worked with the FCT Fire Service to contain the blaze.
He said no casualty was recorded and that the cause of the fire had not yet been established.
“We don’t have the cause of the incident yet. There are no casualties. Investigators will go there from Monday to ascertain what caused the fire,” Abraham said.
“However, we were able to put the fire under control. We got the call about 2 a.m. this morning, sorry, and by 10 this morning we had returned to the station. So, everything is under control.”
Abraham said investigators would return to the scene to determine the circumstances surrounding the outbreak.
“We just wait for investigators to go back there tomorrow and tell us what the cause of the fire is. It’s actually a plaza. We have a line-up of shops,” he said.
Jamil Ajjan, leader of the Julius Berger fire service team that responded to the incident, said firefighters spent several hours battling the blaze.
“The situation is under control. We were called by a quarter to four in the morning. We helped to extinguish the fire, and that’s what we did,” Ajjan said.
He said the team deployed two fire engines, two fire water tankers and eight firefighters to the scene.
“It took us approximately four hours, with the help, obviously, of the federal fire department, to get this fire under control,” Ajjan said.
The cause of the fire remains unknown, with investigators expected to examine the scene on Monday.
