Fire has gutted the private residence of the Minister of State of the Federal Capital Territory, Mariya Mahmoud.
The house is located at Asokoro, in Abuja.
The incident was confirmed by the Acting Director of the FCT Fire Service, Amiola Adebayo on Sunday, February 25.
Adebayo explained that the first floor of the building was completely razed by the fire.
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He noted that the fire had started at about 9:45 am, but said officers of the Service arrived at the scene some minutes after they had received a running call after responders had tried to reach the Federal Fire Service.
“The fire was discovered a few minutes to ten, maybe around 9:45 am. We received a running call around thirteen minutes after ten, so we followed the person who came to call us to the fire scene,” Adebayo explained.
“All of them were on the ground floor. They did not discover the fire on time, and they didn’t call the Fire Service. It was a running call that came to us. From our findings, they say they called the Federal Fire Service, but they didn’t respond on time, that’s when the running call came to our office.
“On reaching there, we saw that the first floor, the upper floor was completely engulfed in fire. So what we could do is just to prevent the fire from spreading to the ground floor, and the adjacent structures. No lives lost”, he said.
The cause of the fire is yet to be clarified by the authorities as of the time of filing this report.
Nurudeen Akewushola is an investigative reporter and fact-checker with The ICIR. He believes courageous in-depth investigative reporting is the key to social justice, accountability and good governance in society. You can reach him via [email protected] and @NurudeenAkewus1 on Twitter.