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Residents loot goods as midnight fire razes shops in Osun

By Timothy Agbor, Osogbo
06 March 2020   |   4:17 am
Some residents of Osun State yesterday stormed the scene of a fire disaster in Osogbo, capital of the state and looted wares of different kinds.

Scene of the fire incident

Some residents of Osun State yesterday stormed the scene of a fire disaster in Osogbo, capital of the state and looted wares of different kinds. A midnight inferno had broken out on Thursday morning and burnt many shops located at Popo area of Osogbo near the palace of Ataoja of Osogbo.

About eight shops were razed by the fire, including the wares in them. The destroyed goods were said to have worth millions of naira.

Thankfully, no life was lost in the inferno, but The Guardian gathered that as the fire raged, some yet-to-be identified residents, suspected to live around the area, damaged the keys to other shops yet to be affected by the fire under the guise of helping the shop owners to salvage their goods.

The hoodlums ended up carting away the goods from a phone accessories’ shop and a tailoring shop beside it.

In a chat with out correspondent at the scene of the fire, the owner of the phone accessories’ shop, Badmus Yisa Adebare, lamented that he arrived at the scene at about 1:00a.m. and discovered that his shop had been broken into while all his goods were looted.

Adebare said he was phoned by another resident of the area that some shops beside his own were burning and that he needed to rescue his goods before the fire spread to his shop. He said the looters destroyed the Close Circuit Television (CCTV) when they gained access into the shop before stealing expensive phones and phone accessories.

“I was called in the middle of the night that shops around my own were on fire. When I rushed down, I saw my shop’s door already opened. At this time, other shops were still burning and efforts were being made to put it out but it hadn’t gotten to my shop. When I entered by shop, I discovered that it had been ransacked and many goods had been stolen by those people we thought were helping to salvage our goods from the fire. I am in pain,” Adebare lamented.

The fire incident was tagged ‘severe’ by firemen.
Residents of the area said the fire destroyed goods in the shops that were recently stocked. The burnt goods, according to them, included tailoring and furniture materials.

The Administrative Officer of the Osun State Fire Services, Fatai Aremu, told newsmen that firemen were informed of the incident at about 12:30a.m. He said it took the men several hours to put out the fire.

Aremu said: “We were there for several hours before we could subdue the fire. It affected nine shops. Furniture, tailoring materials were being sold there and the shops were completely razed.

The impact of the fire was severe, and the loss very huge. We are still investigating the cause. However, preliminary findings of the possible cause point to electric spark in one of the affected shops.”

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