Nigeria’s Iron And Steel Market On Fire

Goods worth millions of naira were destroyed Friday morning when fire razed down a section of Owode-Onirin Iron/Metal Dealers Market

This was revealed to P.M.NEWS by the National Chairman of the Iron/Metal Dealers Association, Alhaji Sanni Alatesebutu, who also explained that the inferno started at about 3:30am as a result of a spark from an electrician’s shop.

According to him, “I received a call at about 3:30am and was told that fire was burning from an electrician’s shop. We immediately tried to mobilize people to put out the fire since it was not so much but their efforts were not effective enough as it had extended to other parts of that section of the market.

“From my calculations when I visited the scene of the inferno, I discovered that about N5 to N6 million worth of goods had been destroyed despite the seemingly small portion of the market that was affected”.

On whether the association would compensate traders who suffered the losses, the chairman said that there wasn't any such plan and therefore appealed to the government to bail the traders out.

“Where do you expect us to get such a huge amount from? If the government can help us out, we’d be very grateful. We've experienced this before but it’s been a very long while.”

Meanwhile, traders who lost their wares to the fire outbreak refused to make any comment as they’d rather the Association’s Executives spoke with P.M.NEWS.

While recounting his losses, one of the traders murmured to himself: “This is a period of real trial, God why did this happen now?”