How mysterious fire razed down widow’s house in Jalingo on New Year day

“I had left my house that fateful day at 6:30 am to see my pastor and after that, I attended the New Year service. My children and four other relatives who are my dependants joined me in church later and it was while we were still in church that we got the message that our […]

“I had left my house that fateful day at 6:30 am to see my pastor and after that, I attended the New Year service. My children and four other relatives who are my dependants joined me in church later and it was while we were still in church that we got the message that our house has been engulfed by fire,” she said.

She added: “I did not recover even a pin from the house. By the time we left church and rushed home, the whole house was engulfed in flames and smoke filled everywhere. I was dumbfounded and I just stood by the gate watching how everything I have ever owned was being consumed by fire. And it was after the house was reduced to ashes that I remembered I had lost N400,000 in the fire. A relative had given me some money for safekeeping and I kept it together with my children’s school fees. I would have saved it in the bank but because of the public holidays, I just decided to keep it at home, not knowing that fire will consume everything.”

An eyewitness who spoke to our correspondent in Jalingo said the three bed room flat at Number 58, Donga road, caught fire at about 9am in the morning. She said she perceived something burning and when she came out the first time to check, she did not see any flames or smoke and she went back. It was a passerby who noticed smoke in the house and rushed in to discover that the house was on fire. He then alerted neighbours who made spirited efforts to put out the fire but it was all in vain.

Mrs Ahmadu who is a civil servant said a nearby Living Faith church used its fire extinguisher to quench the fire but by then, the fire was raging furiously and nothing could have stopped it.

She said those who were at the incident early had insinuated the fire must have started in her bedroom because that was where everything was burnt to ashes.

But neighbours alleged the fire must have been caused by Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) because its officials were seen repairing a nearby transformer some few minutes before the fire incident. Mrs Ahmadu also said she was surprised that there was power blackout in her house for five days before the new year fire but as at the time of the fire incident, electricity was on. She however, said she has left everything in the hands of God, “who gives and who takes away.”

When our correspondent visited the scorched house, burnt papers, blackened zinc and charred carcasses of generator and grinding machine were littered on the ground. And the family of eight was holed up in a one bedroom apartment.

Efforts to get the Fire Service in order to ascertain the cause of the fire proved abortive as they too had joined the state’s workers strike.

But an official of PHCN who did not want to be mentioned said even if the fire was caused by power upsurge as erroneously alleged by the victims, light inside the house is the responsibility of the house owner and not that of PHCN. The anonymous official said: “We cannot attest that the fire was caused by electricity because we have not received any official report of complaint.” He added that if there was a report, the company could have investigated to ascertain if the fire was actually caused by electricity. He said repairing of transformers was the company’s routine duty and by its schedule, wherever repairs are going on, there is power outage in order not to electrocute those working on the transformers and so their repairs couldn’t have caused the fire. He however, advised electricity consumers to save electricity by switching off all electrical appliances whenever they are not being used.

But Mrs Ahmadu said she does not have any electronic device in her bedroom and if the fire actually started in her bedroom, then it was not caused by appliances left on. But she said she does not want to brood over what caused the fire. She wants to forget the horrible experience, as unpleasant as it must have been.