A widow loses all to Ketu fire

There seems to be more to the Ketu market fire than meets the eye as victims recount tales of woe, writesSAMUEL AWOYINFA
 These are not happy times for 60 year-old Moriamo Ibrahim,  a native of  Igbo-nla, Kwara State, who lost her only means of livelihood to the fire that consumed the Ifelodun Plank Market in the  Ketu area of Lagos on Thursday March 7, 2013.
Tearfully, Ibrahim, who owned six shops in the burnt market and machines used for cutting up and polishing wood, said she now lived from hand to mouth.
“Nowadays, I live on stipends from relatives and well meaning individuals who took pity on me,” she said on Monday at the scene of the fire.
“I don’t know what will happen. I had lost my husband and a son. I have four other children and I am solely responsible for their upkeep. Now the source of our livelihood is gone,” the dark-skinned woman said in Yoruba.

She said the shops that were destroyed in the fire originally belonged to her late son, Rashidi, who died 10 years ago.
“I had to take over the shops after Rashidi’s wife also died some years later,” she added.
Also, looking quite sad, the vice-chairman of the market, Mr. Yusuf Gbemiga, said he had just taken consignment of some range of precious woods, such as Mahogany, Mazonia and Akala, and kept them in his eight shops before the fire  broke loose.
“I had just taken delivery of a fresh supply of woods that Thursday morning. Everything perished in the fire. When I calculated what I lost in the eight shops, I arrived at N8m.
“If I had not taken new stock of woods that day, my losses would have been minimal.”
Apart from Ibrahim and Gbemiga, many other victims of the fire incident equally lost their means of livelihood. One of the affected traders, Mrs Iyabo Olorunwa said she took a loan from a micro-finance bank to re-stock her plank shop just before the market went up in flames. The fire consumed everything.
About eight shops belonging to the chairman of the market, Mr. Aliu Bello, were also destroyed in the fire. The contents of the shops were valued at N7m.
Two widows, Abibat and Hafzat Lawal, are also among the victims. They lost the business which they inherited from their late husbands, to the fire.
But the cause of the fire incident remains a mystery to many traders at the market.  While some of them believe there is more to it than meets the eye, others think it must have been caused by an electrical fault.
The first group argued that the land on which the market was built had been a subject of litigation between the traders and the Agboyi/Ketu Local Council Development Area. So, they accused agents of the council, describing them as responsible for the fire.
But in a swift reaction to this allegation, chairman of the LCDA, Mr. Obafemi Durosinmi, described the claim as false and lacking an iota of truth, in a telephone interview with our correspondent on Monday.
He said “I learnt that some of the traders said I sent people to set the market ablaze. It is not true.
“The executives of the market were in my office this morning for a meeting. They confirmed that there was a minor fire incident on that Thursday morning in the market, which they were able to put out. There is no truth in that insinuation. How could I have send people to go and set the market ablaze?”
Discrediting those who made the insinuation, Bello said it was libellous.
“Those who are insinuating that the council agents had set the market ablaze have no facts to substantiate what they are saying. So, it is very dangerous to do that.”
Bello said he was at home when he received a phone call from the security men in the market between 9.30pm and 10.00pm, informing him that the market was on fire.
“Before we could rush down here, everything was destroyed. The stock we lost to the fire runs into billions of naira,” he said.
Bello and other traders appealed to the state government and corporate organisations to come to their aid.
“We need funds to rebuild and start our business afresh,” Bello said.
While visiting the market after the incident, Governor Babatunde Fashola had promised the traders financial assistance to enable them rebuild it. Officials of the Lagos State Emergency Management Authority had started enumerating the traders on Monday while evacuating debris from the scene of the fire.