Fire on Tuesday gutted the office of the Department of Petroleum Resources in Minna, the Niger State capital, as various equipment ranging from inverter and internet facilities were destroyed.
While addressing journalists, the State Operations Controller, Engr. Abdullahi Isah Jankara, said it took the intervention of vulganizers to put off the fire.
The fire which was said to have been ignited by an electrical fault, started at about 3:55pm from the internet and inverter unit and affected three offices.
Jankara however said preliminary investigations showed that a lot of items, which cannot be ascertained as at the time of filing this report, were damaged in the four offices.
According to him: “We have a lot of documents as related to licence processing and products schedule documents intact because they were all kept in my office.
“The inverter is gone, all the internet facilities are burnt and we are still to take inventory to know the exact number of items damaged by the fire.
“When the fire started, all members of staff were out for monitoring.
“It was the vulganizers nearby who saw the smoke coming out from the roof that raised alarm.
“They informed us that when they saw smoke coming out, they tried to put it off.
“That was when one of the batteries exploded and the fire escalated.
“But the state fire service were swift in their actions when we called on them.
“We are relocating all our electrical equipment down from the storey building to avoid future recurrences and we will increase the amount of fire extinguishers.”
While ruling out sabotage as envisaged by some quarters, Jankara said: “It was a fire outbreak.
“No marketer attacked or planned it against us.
“It was a breach from electric power source and our inverter power supply.”
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