Last Monday came as a normal day for 29-year-old UchereEse, who woke up from his one-room apartment, thanking God for another opportunity to continue to hope for the best.
The previous day being Sunday, the 300-Level Banking and Finance student of the Ambrose Alli University (AAU), Ekpoma, Edo State, had dreamt that a particular lady was crying for help amid some assailants who held him hostage.
In the dream, he saw himself making frantic attempts to rescue the lady, but he could not before he eventually woke up to realise that it was a nightmare.
Ignorant of the implication of such, Uchere, the following day, left home for his Mother’s place at Obaho in the heart of Warri. He never knew that would be the last time he would be setting his eyes on his property. His mission to his mother’s abode at Obaho was to see if he could have a brunch, having skipped breakfast for lack of what to eat.
But while waiting for some victuals from his single mother, his phone rang and was informed that his room was on fire.
The hustler, as Uchere called himself, was apparently sharing a room with his 25-year-old younger brother, UchereEjiro, a painter, at Number 9, Okpokiti Street, Warri, Delta State. The elder Uchere should ordinarily be on campus at AAU, but for the ongoing ASUU strike that has paralysed academic activities in public universities in the country.
By the time Uchere rushed home, he could not believe what he saw: things had gone out of hand and the entire bungalow of eight rooms had been reduced to rubbles! And there was pandemonium everywhere. The clothes he wore to his mother’s place became the only attire left on him. They were a pair of sandals, a pair of jeans trousers, and his shirt!
The fire incident, which began at about 1.15 p.m penultimate Monday, was said to have begun from one of the rooms whose occupant was not indoor. As of the time of the inferno, the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) was on song; they were not ‘holding’ the ‘light’ as usual! So, some of the victims alleged that the fire began from an electric fault in the absentee tenant’s room.
However, benevolent God was on hand, as little children, who would have been caught in the disaster were swiftly whisked away by their parents.
This was the experience of Mr Joseph Akinwale Sara, one of the tenants, who was in his two-room apartment when the fire started. According to the father of three- two boys and one girl, the children had hardly rested after returning from extra mural lesson when the fire started. His wife, a petty trader, was outside the building, where she displayed her wares and does her business.
Mr Sara told this reporter, whose office is just a stone’s throw from of the scene of incident, that the inferno started with a smoke from a co-tenant’s room, while narrating amid tears and laughter what transpired at the earliest stage of the fire incident.
“My children just returned from lesson at about 1.10 p.m, when I saw smoke coming out of the room of one of my neighbours. And he was not at home. We attempted to break into the room, but the burglary proof would not let us and before we knew, the fire had spread to another room through the ceiling,” Sara, who hails from Odiaye in Okitipupa Local Government Area of Ondo State, stated.
Sara, who is in his 40s and works in the security department of Aero maritime /Brava Shipping Nigeria Limited in Warri, said he was in shorts and in the midst of the confusion over what to rescue first from his two-room apartment, he decidedly managed to grab his children and quickly led them out of the burning house. He said he fell, swiftly stood up again and headed to pick his box containing his certificates, registers and records of monies contributed and kept with him by his colleagues at work.
Having lived in the house for over seven years with his wife and children, Sara said he had lost the essence of all his earnings to the inferno and therefore needed urgent help from the state governor, Dr Emmanuel Uduaghan; caretaker Chairman of Warri South Local Government Area, as well as oil multinationals and well-wishers to bring back life to his family.
He has, among others, lost items like deep freezer, settee, his children and wife’s clothing, sound systems, which he said would take over N3 million to replace.
While narrating how he had been coping with life after the incident, Mr Sara, said “my family has been putting up with family friends. I now sleep in my place of work. This jeans and T-shirt I’m wearing were a gift from an Igbo trader at Igbo Market, when the man saw me walking about bare. My pastor also gave me N5,000 after the incident.”
Besides the above victims, 45-year old Mrs Roseline Obrebor, mother of five, was on her way to Ughelli when she received a call that her only room was on fire. Being a single woman, two of her daughters were living up with her and none of them was indoor except a friend of the daughters, Hope Ifada.
One of the daughters, Eloho Oghenerobor, who was in tears while speaking at Tribune’s office in Warri, said the room played host to her mother and three grown-up children. She noted that they moved into the bungalow about two years ago. But she was at work at an eatery in Water Resources, Effurun, and her mother and siblings were also away. But her friend, Ifada, was in their room watching television.
According to Ifada, who witnessed the inferno, it started as a smoke and before they knew it, it had degenerated to a raging fire. She was only able to escape the inferno with a TV set, her friend’s box containing clothing before the fire engulfed the entire building.
Items lost to the inferno, according to Oghenerobor, included, among others, N25, 000 cash inside her mother’s box, her 2008 NECO certificate and that of two other siblings, as well as WAEC certificates belonging to two other siblings of hers, which she estimated at N5 million.
Today, their mother is squatting and recuperating, after fainting on hearing the news, at their pastor’s house, while the children are squatting at different places in the town, obviously left in the hands of their creator.
InsideNigerDelta sought audience with one of the owners of the house, Chief Collins Clark, also known as Ogodovame, who informed that the house was built in 1970 and that he and some other siblings inherited it from their late father. The 57-year-old, a trader at Okere Market, said the eight-room bungalow had been razed completely before he arrived the scene on the fateful day.
Said to be good to his tenants, helpless Ogodovame is begging local and state goverments and other public-spirited Nigerians to come to his aid, saying he could not nobody he could hold responsible for the predicament.
A ‘token’ of N3.5 million, Ogodovame said would cater for the refurbishment of the bungalow, which he said he had spent a lot on its renovation just a few months ago.
Meanwhile, the Caretaker Chairman of the Warri South Local Government Area, De Augustine Uroya, while speaking with InsideNigeria Delta at the scene of the incident shortly after men of the state fire service were able to contain the fire, sympathised with the occupants of the building. He requested three more fire extinguishing trucks and three water tankers from the state government given the metropolitan nature of Warri city.
Dr Uroyi advised residents of the local government to be more vigilant and meticulous in putting to use electrical appliances in their homes.
It is estimated that an average of one fire incident occurs at least every week in the ‘twin’ towns of Warri and Effurun, meaning government should begin to think of urban renewal and reengineering to rid the towns of slums and indiscriminate structures, according to some residents.
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