Fire razes Orange, Apo markets in Abuja, Nasarawa

 

 The popular fruit market known as Orange Market in Marara­ba, Nasarawa State and the Tyre Market in Apo, Abuja, have been gutted by fire.While the Mararaba incident oc­curred in the early hours of Saturday and destroyed almost the whole mar­ket, the latter took place on Sunday.An eyewitness told The AU­THORITY that the fire started around 2.00am from a food ven­dor’s fire near the tomato section. He said the woman, while cooking went to sleep without putting out her fire and that the fire took advantage of the Harmattan and went wild be­yond control.However, when The AUTHORI­TY contacted some traders on phone, they were still in shock and could not coherently give accounts.

Sunday Gombe Mariom, Chair­man, Potato Sellers Association in the market who lost everything in his shop and even his office, said all they know was that the fire started from the tomato section and that he had lost everything he kept in the shop.

Mariom said he could not save anything because he was called and notified of the inferno around 2.00am when the fire was already blazing.

Mrs. Ayuba Bitrus, another po­tato dealer, said she returned from a trip the previous day and had offload­ed a trailer of goods and was yet to sell, only to be told in the morning that the market was on fire, by the time she got there, her section of the market had been reduced to rubbles.

She said her worry is the credit she and other members of her group obtained from a micro finance bank. She said they had organised them­selves into groups to benefit from loans which have been invested into the business, only for fire to consume the goods. She is a team leader of a group of five who took loans from a micro finance bank to expand their businesses.

 

The fire service was reported­ly contacted, but that by the time they got there, it was late to salvage the market and that very few goods were saved. No official of the fire ser­vice or the Nasarawa State author­ities were available at press time to comment on the tragedy. No life was, however lost in the inferno.

Other sections destroyed in­cluded the yam, water melon, or­ange, coconut and tomato sec­tions where the fire was suspected to have started from, as well as the retail traders section.

Source: The AUTHORI­TY