Goods worth millions of naira were on Tuesday destroyed by fire at the popular GSM Village in Cantonment, Lokoja, the Kogi State capital.
The cause of the fire incident, which razed about 26 shops, was yet to be ascertained as at the time of filing this report on Tuesday.
The Chairman of the Traders Association, Hassan Garba, while speaking with journalists, said that goods worth millions of naira were lost to the fire, adding that the cause of the incident was yet to be known.
He said: “The fire started in early hours of Tuesday, and we immediately called on the Kogi State Fire Service, but unfortunately, they said they do not have water to quench the fire, so we have to resort to self-help by putting out the fire ourselves, or else, the loss would have been more than this.”
Garba noted that, most of the owners of the shops affected by the fire just bought goods into their respective shops.
“The shops that were affected included that jewelry sellers, textile materials, among others. Five million, six hundred thousand was the worth of jewelries that got burnt,” he said.
Garba, however, appealed to the Kogi State Government to come to their aid because the loss was too much for the victims to bear.
One of the victims, whose shop was also affected by the fire, Alhaji Yusuf Momoh, appealed to the Kogi State Government to assist them financially because the money they used to procure the goods that were lost was collected based on interest.
“All my goods have been consumed by fire and the remaining ones are useless, we are calling on the state government to come to our aid so that we can survive.”
A shoe seller, Muhammed Ibrahim, while speaking, said she lost goods worth six million naira to the inferno, adding that his shop has been razed by the fire and nothing remains for him and his children to feed on.
However, the Administrator, Lokoja Local Government Area, Hon. Muhammed Danasabe Muhammed, alongside other council officials, visited the scene to sympathize with the shop owners.
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