About 15 shops with goods worth millions of naira have been completely razed down at Agbani Road, in Enugu South Local Government Area of Enugu State.The affected shops were located at the popular Afor Awkunanaw Market, also known as Garriki Market.
Eyewitnesses told our correspondent that a shopping plaza that housed electrical shops, hair salons, phone accessories, a cafeteria, and motor/motorcycle parts, caught fire at about 11 pm on Monday night. One of the witnesses, who gave his name as Onyebuchi Omerie, said the entire building would have been completely razed but for the intervention of residents who raced to the area on time to help douse the ravaging inferno.
Omerie said that though no one could actually state how the fire started, various accounts said the inferno that gutted the shopping mall started from refuse in the gutter that someone set fire to but it spread and attacked the building. “I don’t know actually what caused the fire incident. I heard that someone set fire to a refuse in the gutter when they closed for business yesterday and the fire spread and caught the building that housed the shops. It was also said that the fire was caused by a Suya seller who probably did not put out the fire from his oven well,” a resident told our correspondent.