The Bodija plank market fire on Tuesday night in the Ibadan North Local Government Area of Oyo State left at least 50 shops destroyed and one person reportedly injured.
Ahmed Abdulwasiu, the injured victim, is currently being treated at Calvary Baptist Hospital in Bodija, Ibadan.
Abdulwasiu described how he was trying to put out the fire in his shop before becoming trapped and how he would have perished if rescuers hadn’t acted quickly.
Mutiu Olaoluwa, a furniture trader who was also a victim, reportedly said: “I was outside my shop when i suddenly heard the fire upsurge. Before I knew it, everything was engulfed in flames. I was unable to remove anything. More than 75 of my customer’s doors were burned. My N120,000 plank also caught fire.
“All of my equipment, a generator, and machines were destroyed by the fire, and I lost over N5 million as a result. Burnt was everything I had worked for the past 30 to 40 years.
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“I was here yesterday around 4:30 pm. The fire started from a carpenter shop behind my shop. I went there to see what was going on. On my way back to my shop to carry my equipment, the fire came to my shop in less than five minutes,” said Adeniyi Ogunmola, who is also a victim.
“I just got back from the market where I loaded a full trailer of plank; I lost about N6 million worth of goods to the incident. If not for people who carried me out of the fire, I would have died by now.”
But the victims demanded assistance from the government.
