Dr Mariya Mahmoud, Minister of State for the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), has had her private house damaged by fire, leaving little to recover.
The address of the property is No. 9, Justice Roseline Ukeji Close, Asokoro.
Mr. Austine Elemue, the minister’s media adviser, acknowledged the event on Sunday and said the reason of the fire outbreak was under investigation.
Amiola Adebayo, Acting Director of the FCT Fire Service, confirmed the occurrence with our correspondent.
Adebayo reported that the fire entirely destroyed the first floor of the property.
He explained that the incident began around 9:45 a.m., but that officers from the Service arrived at the scene a few minutes later after receiving a running call from responders who attempted to contact the Federal incident Service.
A running call indicates that instead of phoning the Fire Service’s Emergency number, responders insisted on walking to the office to seek the attention of the firefighters.
“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.
“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.
As of the time of filing this report, the cause of the fire was yet to be determined, although the media assistant to the minister, Austin Elemue, also confirmed the incident.