Two Die as Fire Guts Building in Lagos

        By Nehru Odeh
A middle-aged man and his son were reportedly burnt to death in the early hours of Saturday 8, September 2018 after fire razed a two-storey building at Awolowo Road Ikeja, in Lagos. 

The incident occurred at about three o’clock this morning at the commercial nerve centre of Lagos, just a stone throw from Ikeja Bridge. The two-storey building houses several shops in which goods such as clothes and electronics are sold.

It was gathered that the fire was caused by an air conditioner which an occupant left plugged to a power souce in one of the shops in the building.  The man and his son who died in the inferno couldn’t escaped when the fire started because their apartment was locked from outside.

 An eye witness told this reporter that the victim, who was indebted to his landlord, asked someone to lock his apartment from outside so as to avoid being noticed and harassed by his landlord.

“This is a big lesson to everyone,” the eye-witness who spoke on condition of anonymity said. “If the man hadn’t locked his apartment from outside he and his son would have escaped when the fire started, she said lamenting that the officials of the Lagos State Fire Service did not respond on time.

“The fire started at about three o’ clock this morning, but the Lagos State Fire Service didn’t arrive in the place until about five’ o clock,” she said.

When New Narrative Online got to the scene this morning, sympathizers gathered in front of the building, discussing and lamenting the lives and property lost in the inferno. One of the occupants of the building, an exporter who deals in clothes and fashion wears and lost goods worth 10 billion naira, wasn’t in the building when the inferno occurred. He had allegedly traveled to attend a burial ceremony.