By Shehu Danladi,
Minna
The Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) office in Minna, Niger State, has been gutted by fire.
The inferno also affected the office of the State Operations’ Controller, Mr. Abdullahi Isah Jankara.
The fire, which was said to have been caused by an electrical fault, started at about 3:55pm on Tuesday, February 6, 2018, from the Internet and inverter unit of the office;
but no life was lost.
After the incident, Jankara said that it took the intervention of vulganizers operating within the neighbourhood to save the entire structure from being razed down.
He further disclosed that preliminary investigations showed that items worth millions of naira were damaged in the four offices affected.
According to the DPR State Operations Controller, “We have a lot of documents which included documents related to license processing and products schedule documents intact, because they were all kept in my office.
“The inverter is gone, all the Internet facilities within the number of offices that were affected by the inferno are burnt and we are still taking inventory to ascertain the exact number of items that were damaged.”
The state DPR Controller, who however, did not explain the number of staff on duty as at the time of the outbreak, said, “When the fire started, all members of staff were out for monitoring. It was the vulganizers nearby that saw smoke coming out from the roof and raised alarm.
“They informed us that when they saw smoke coming out, they hurriedly mobilised to the building as they heard the explosion. When
one of the batteries exploded and the fire escalated. But the State
Fire Services were as well swift in their actions when we called on them”.
The fire disaster will not affect the workings of DPR in the state,
Jankar assured, saying, “We are relocating all our electrical equipment down from the storey building to avoid recurrences, and we will increase the amount of fire extinguishers”.
Jankara, who ruled out the possibility sabotage, said, “It was a fire
outbreak, no marketer attacked or planned it agaisnt us. It was a breach from electric power source and our inverter power supply”.