Multi-million Naira worth of goods, properties destroyed as Lagos market razes to the ground
Goods and properties worth multi-millions of naira, have been lost to a fire that razed a section of Binukonu Ultra Modern Market, Ojota.
The fire outbreak was said to have been caused by an electrical fault. Over fifty stalls in the market were razed to the ground.
Panicky traders were seen trying to salvage their goods in their shops from the approaching fire.
Alhaja Rehanat Salami, the female Head of the market (Iya-Oloja) confirmed that the fire was caused by an electrical fault.
She said: “I didn’t look at the time when I received a phone call that the market was burning when I hurriedly started coming here.
“When the fire occurred on the two previous occasions, we did everything the government instructed us to do.
“When the fire occurred the first time, the government helped us to reconstruct the affected stalls for free.
“I heard that this fire was caused by an electrical spark, I had warned everyone to always turn off their electricity connections when there is a power outage.
“We make sure we put off all the lights when we close for the day at the market.”
The secretary of the market, Gbenga Fayemi said the occurrence was not the first time.
“This fire that occurred just now is the third time that it is occurring, the first was three years ago and the last one occurred last year.
“The traders had not fully recovered from the previous incidents when this one occurred despite all our efforts to prevent a reoccurrence.
“When the first incident occurred Hon. Rotimi Agunsoye of the House of Representatives, gave us some fire fighting equipment.
“When the second incident occurred, we tried using the equipment but it didn’t quench the fire.
“I also installed the equipment in all these shops that got burnt because I was told that the equipment will burst and stop the fire when a fire begins but I was surprised that it did not work today,” he said.
