A midnight fire on Saturday razed part of Aphro Plaza located in Gwagwalada Area Council, Abuja.
Hoodlums took advantage of the fire incident at the plaza where Next Level Church is located and carted away goods worth millions of naira.
While attempts were being made by some shop owners to rescue their goods, the hoodlums broke into other shops and started looting the goods.
Abdullahi Abubakar, the security guard of Aphro Plaza, told THE WHISTLER at the scene of the inferno, that the fire began around 2am on Saturday morning and continued burning with no help from people or fire service to put out the fire.
Narrating how the fire started, Abubakar said he was just done “patrolling” the plaza and sat down to keep watch when he heard the explosion from the transformer.
He said on hearing that, he went downstairs and checked the transformer, but I saw everything looking intact, but suddenly part of the plaza where Next Level holds its church service was up in flames.
“Then I began to call the caretaker of the plaza, Mr Bature, but I think he was asleep by then because he didn’t pick the call,” Abubakar said.
He explained that when the caretaker didn’t pick the call, he took a motorcycle and rushed to his house and banged on his gate but had no response .
Abubakar further explained that: “It was after I came back that I met one guy with a big wheel spanner, he was using that to break the locks on people’s doors.
“He had already broken one door down and I asked him to stop, then he asked: ‘who asked me to stop?’ then I told him I’m the one. From there, I noticed his body became weak and I didn’t know which direction he went. It was later that I realised he had climbed the stairs and broke into people’s shops.”
The Aphro security guard highlighted that he can recognise the guy when next he sees him, adding that, “he is from this neighbourhood, I know him very well.
“Once I’m done doing what I’m doing right now, I’ll start investigating his whereabouts.
“People got their belongings stolen, there’s someone that said his P.S (computer game) was stolen. The tailor woman there had her sewing machine stolen.
“Dream Centre had their keyboard stolen. The lawyer upstairs got his two laptops stolen, so many things were stolen.”
Meanwhile, Architect Bagudu, one of the tenants who lost his laptop to the thieves, told THE WHISTLER that he was called around 2:30 am by one of the boys working for him, informing him that the Plaza was on fire.
He narrated that it took him 30 minutes to reach the plaza, as he lives far away, and upon arriving, he met a busy and crowded place where people were busy trying to save their goods from the ravaging fire.
He said: “The other building there was burning, no attempt was made to quench the fire because people were just busy taking their belongings, because even the cause of the fire was an explosion, people were scared let it not come and explore and cause some more damage.
“The Plaza was just crowded, and in the process I even lost my phone because when I was trying to carry some of my items down my phone just fell and instantly somebody picked it up and turned it off.”
He explained that such an urgent situation made the tenants allow people they didn’t know to help evacuate their properties from the building without knowing who was who and some of the shops whose owners were not aware of the incident remained locked.
According to him, it was later that most of the tenants began to complain about their missing properties, adding that he too got his laptop stolen.
The architect said he had also reported the matter to the police station near the Gwagwalada market.
“They asked me to write my statement. The IPO that was in charge of the case told me that he came in the morning and people were complaining of the security issues and how the whole thing was handled but they’ll still come and investigate the issue.
“I’ve also gone to block my phone line,” he said.
Meanwhile fire service could not be reached for comments.
Midnight Fire Razes Aphro Plaza In Gwagwalada As Hoodlums Cart Away Goods is first published on The Whistler Newspaper