Follow Us on Google
By Vivian Onyebukwa And Kate Halim
It was sheer Armageddon. Balls of fire and smoke rose from under the bridge and formed a fiery cloud even on top of the busy bridge. Crowds of traders, sympathisers and onlookers gathered several metres away from the scene of carnage, watching the tragedy. Many of the affected traders bewailed the disaster happening in real time before their very eyes. It was on Wednesday March 23 2022.
Goods worth millions of naira were lost in the incident which has badly impacted the busy bridge.
At the scene of the fire that gutted stored goods under the ever busy Apongbon Bridge in Lagos stood a man with his hands on his head and oblivious of what was happening around him.
He had a lost look on his face, his eyes were misty and he would sigh occasionally while looking straight at the burnt container of goods before him.
Not minding the smoke still rising from the debris of burnt goods worth millions of naira, this man who identified himself as Mr. Ekene Okwunwanne told Saturday Sun that he lost his goods in the fire.
Shaking his head and motioning for his boy who was standing beside him to get him water, Okwunwanne told the reporters that he didn’t know where to start from after losing his goods. In his words, he had taken a loan from a bank to stock his shop recently.
“I’m finished,” he wailed. “Where do I start from? I have to go back to my village because there’s nothing left for me to do in Lagos. The sad thing is that I bought these goods from the loan I took from the bank. How do I pay back this loan? Why did God allow this to happen to me?”
Okwunwanne said the cause of the fire was unknown but he said he suspected that some people stored petrol under the bridge. He lamented about how people who had nothing to lose cost him and others their means of livelihood.
Madu Jerry, a trader and another victim, hesitated to speak to Saturday Sun initially because of people he described as enemies who would want to laugh at him as a result of his misfortune. “You don’t know who is who; that’s why I don’t want to talk. There are those that if something happens to you, they would be happy.”
Madu who sells processed foods like poundo yam, potato flour, wheat flour, plantain flour, and Semovita, said he lives in Ibeju Lekki. By the time he got to the venue of the fire incident, everything he had in his shop had gone up in flames.
“I lost about N10 million because I just offloaded goods last Saturday before this unfortunate incident,” he said.
The distraught man who at a point started sounding incoherent because he was struggling with his emotions, stated that the fire incident affected the bakery line.
As at the time Saturday Sun team visited the scene of the fire on Thursday afternoon, there were light flames still under the bridge, while some parts were filled with smoke.
On his next line of action, Madu said: “I can’t do anything for now. They have just given us seven days to vacate this place. I can’t think straight. I don’t know what to do. I need help.”
Another victim, Mr. Chinedu Emmanuel, an indigene of Anambra State, lamented about how the fire destroyed all his goods before he could get to the scene. “I live in Coker, close to Aguda, Surulere. I was called around 4am that there was a fire outbreak, but before I got here, all my goods were gone. I don’t want to remember how much I lost because it’s making me sick. I just want to forge ahead because there is nobody to blame. Since I came here in 2006, I have not witnessed such a thing.”
Emmanuel, who was selling baking items before the incident, wanted the government to give them some time to look for another location instead of telling them to leave before seven days. He added that he would also appreciate it if the government could find them another place to continue their businesses. He equally implored the government to assist them financially to pick up the broken pieces of their lives.
Close to Mr. Emmanuel stood a young man who kept asking, in Igbo language, why God abandoned him. He kept walking up and down while assessing the damage the fire caused, even as some people tried hard to console him.
When Saturday Sun approached him, he simply identified himself as Ikechukwu, claiming that he is also an indigene of Anambra State. He said he was selling cake and bread ingredients. He stated that he could not move on with his life because he suffered a huge loss. He even described his own situation as the worst because, according to him, he could not find his container, much more the goods in it.
Describing how bad the situation was, Ikechukwu said: “I have been going through the debris but I can’t locate my container. I think some people stole something here and used this fire as a cover up.”
Although there was no life lost in the incident, one of the traders who also lost his goods, told Saturday Sun that deaths were averted as some of the victims wanted to jump into the fire, but were stopped by the people around there.
Uchenna Emeribe, an indigene of Abia State, was still in a state of shock when he spoke to Saturday Sun. He implored the government to come to their aid no matter how little, to enable them start off their businesses again.
Emeribe, a graduate of business administration from Lagos State University said he had been in business for over eight years before the fire incident, noting that this setback has destabilised him. He revealed that he recently bought some goods in preparation for Easter sales but everything has been reduced to ashes.
Emeribe said: “It is hard starting over from something like this. No matter how you look at it, your business will not be the same again. I lost so much money in this fire that thinking about it wants to make me go mad but I thank God for life. I have hopes that my tomorrow will be better.”
Lamenting her loss, Mrs. Caroline Ogunleye, who also sold cake ingredients in a shop close to the bridge said she couldn’t salvage anything from the container where she stored her goods. She stated that she didn’t hear about the fire until she got to the market around 8am that morning.
“Everything I had inside my container was razed down. As I’m talking to you, the only thing I have left are the small goods in my small shop opposite the bridge. I don’t know how I will recover from this. I just pray that the government comes to our aid and soon,” Mrs Ogunleye added.
The woman told Saturday Sun that she had been doing the business of selling cake ingredients for five years now, describing the trade as a lucrative one. The mother of two, who said she lives in Ojuelegba with her husband, said the only thing keeping her sane right at the moment was the fear of leaving her children alone in this world.
“We don’t really know where this fire started from or what caused it but some people are insinuating that it may be due to the bad oil that some people were using to bake cakes. Whatever the cause is, this incident has set me back in business,”she lamented.
Sitting among some people opposite the burnt bridge was Mr. Emeka Morka. He said his goods, which were worth N5 million was destroyed. “I couldn’t pick one thing from that fire. I’m devastated and confused. I’m sitting here because I don’t want to go home. What will I be doing at home at this time of the day?”
Morka said he got to the market around 6am but saw street urchins popularly known as area boys having a field day with people’s goods. He said they were looting the containers and stealing the goods that the fire didn’t affect while pretending to be salvaging the items.
Aftermath of the fire
On Wednesday morning, fire gutted several shops in a makeshift market under the Apongbon Bridge on Lagos Island,extending to Eko Bridge. Goods worth millions of naira were destroyed. The intensity of the fire badly affected the Eko Bridge, truncating movement along that corridor.
The incident led to a chaotic traffic situation, as vehicular movements in the axis was grounded, bringing business activities to a complete halt.
The fastest means of transportation from that area to Victoria Island, Lekki, Ikoyi and Apapa since Wednesday was the commercial motorbike popularly known as okada.
Areas affected after the fire incident include Ijora, Apongbon, CMS, Funsho Williams Avenue, and Constain, Apapa Road, among others.
Even though no deaths were recorded, burnt goods from the different containers used to store them were littered everywhere under the bridge while young boys and girls were seen trying to salvage some edibles from the debris.
