Fire Guts Kogi Phone Market, Properties Worth Millions Destroyed

Assets worth millions of naira have been destroyed due to a fire outbreak at a GSM village around Kpata market in Lokoja, the Kogi State capital.

According to journalists, the fire outbreak started in the early hours of Thursday following a power upsurge.

It was also learnt that shop owners could not recover anything from the fire after it got out of control.

A trader in the market, identified as Muhammed Yahaya, who lost his goods to the fire, recounted the incident, saying, “Somebody called me at 5:30 am today that the market is on fire. On arrival, many shops have already been destroyed by fire. So we tried to check the real cause of the fire outbreak. From all indications so far, we were informed by the people that stay within that the power voltage they brought was high.

“The residents of the area said it impacted their fans, lights, and other things. Actually, this might be the remote cause of the fire outbreak in the market. Millions of naira worth of properties have been damaged. Laptops, phones, and accessories got destroyed. The most miserable thing is that most of these people just received their goods this week. It has never occurred before. It is still a big surprise to every one of us who owns a shop in the market.”

He urged the Kogi State Government to interfere by supporting those who lost their assets financially and reconstructing the GSM village.

"We believe we have a governor that listens to us. He is like a father to us. As you can see, we are youths who are capable people. Some of us are graduates, and we are not relying on the government to provide jobs for us. We created the jobs on our own." He affirmed.