A major fire outbreak has destroyed several shops at Eda Plaza, a building materials market, in the Jabi area of Abuja. The blaze, which reportedly started around 3am on Sunday, caused extensive damage to shops and stored building materials at the plaza, with traders seen making frantic efforts to remove their belongings from the affected […]
A major fire outbreak has destroyed several shops at Eda Plaza, a building materials market, in the Jabi area of Abuja.
The blaze, which reportedly started around 3am on Sunday, caused extensive damage to shops and stored building materials at the plaza, with traders seen making frantic efforts to remove their belongings from the affected area.
Footage from the scene posted by the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) showed shop owners and others scrambling to salvage goods as the fire ravaged parts of the market.
A witness told NTA that the incident was discovered after his brother-in-law, who operates two shops and a packing store at the plaza, received a distress call from one of his colleagues.
According to him, they immediately left home for the market after receiving the alert but met a fire that had already spread across a significant portion of the plaza.
“We were at home this morning, as early as 3 am, and my brother-in-law received a call from one of his colleagues here in the plaza that the plaza was on fire. So we had to rush down there. On getting here, we discovered that the situation was so bad,” he said.
The eyewitness explained that his brother-in-law lost one of his two shops and the packing store to the inferno, while only one of the shops survived the fire.
“In this plaza, my brother-in-law had two shops and a packing store. Unfortunately, only one of the shops was saved. The other shop and the packing store were totally damaged by the fire,” he said.
He further disclosed that roofing materials worth more than N20 million were among the items destroyed in the incident.
According to him, the losses were particularly painful because some of the materials had only recently been brought into the affected shops and packing store.
“Over here, you see some of the roofs that we still have here. We are talking about a roof that is worth over N20 million lost in this fire,” he said.
He added that some of the roofing materials destroyed had been restocked just a day before the fire.
“Because the other shop, we had roofs that were just restocked last night. And then the packing store also, we had roofs that were just restocked last night,” he said.
Despite the extent of the destruction and the financial losses suffered by traders, the eyewitness said the absence of fatalities provided some relief.
“In our situation, we give thanks to God that no life was lost in this situation,” he said.
The cause of the fire is yet to be disclosed.
