Traders whose shops were affected by the fire outbreak that occured last week Sunday at a local market in the Oba-nla area of Akure in Ondo State have continued to count their losses.
The traders lost food items, clothes, electrical materials among others to the fire.
Some of the traders also lost cash to the fire incident aside goods.
SaharaReporters gathered that at least 25 shops and five houses were affected by the fire incident while goods worth millions of naira were also destroyed.
Efforts by some residents of the area to stop the fire from spreading to residential houses close to the market yielded no result.
A trader in female clothing, Mrs Tosin Rasheed told our correspondent that they suspected electrical fault from one of the shops as the cause of the fire outbreak.
She said the fire incident had compounded the low patronage they had been experiencing in the market as a result of fear of Coronavirus in the state.
According to Mrs Rasheed, she lost all the goods and materials recently stocked in her shop, which worth over N500,000.
She said, “I was called around 10pm that my shop was on fire but before I got there, everything was already in ashes and there was nothing I could do again.
“I couldn’t even bring out a pin because all the goods (wears) I have in my boutique was destroyed by the fire.”
A trader in food items in the market, Mrs Sola Olaleye, described the damage done by the fire as enormous.
She said though no life was lost in the fire incident, their sources of livelihood had been destroyed.
Mr Ibironke Ayodele, who owns a grocery store in the market, said he lost close to one million naira worth of goods to the incident.
He said, “I just pray God will speak to the mind of the government on my behalf because I have lost all my entire means of livelihood to this inferno.”
A trader in electrical materials, who simply identified himself as Mr Eze, said all his goods were lost to the fire including huge cash.
He accused men of the state fire service of refusing to show up when they were called for rescue.
Eze appealed to the state and local government authorities to assist them in cushioning the effect of the fire on their businesses.
Authorities of the Ondo State Fire Service refused to speak on the incident when contacted by our correspondent.
Findings by SaharaReporters revealed that almost all the tricks of the fire service were in bad shape, making emergency response to disasters almost impose
Source: SaharaReporters