Fire at Fed. Secretariat: Our documents on the 2nd floor, no foul play - Minister

There was confusion in Federal Ministry of Education, Federal Secretariat in Abuja, on Thursday around 2pm when fire gutted the 6th, 7th and 8th floors of the ministry but was swiftly put out by the fire service.here

However, the rumours making the rounds as to the suspicion of foul play, were laid to rest when a staff of the ministry informed LEADERSHIP that the documents of the ministry are on the second floor and not the affected floors as being speculated and as such, there was no foul play.

Fire fighters arrived at the scene on time and it was leant that no one was hurt.

Some workers at the complex that spoke to revealed that the fire equipment at the building were not working, this affected efforts to extinguish the fire on time.

“All the fire extinguishers in the building have expired,” one official said. “That could have been used to extinguish the fire at it first started. But they didn’t work.”

Minister of state for Education, Prof. Viola Onwuliri, when she spoke to journalists on the issue, said, “For the prompt intervention of Fire Service, the fire would have been more than this. You can see how many trucks they came along with and they have assured me that they would find the point where the fire started from.

“But the most important thing is that nobody was hurt and the fire service people are still working”.

The Minister of State, said she can’t say precisely when the fire started, “Well I won’t be able to tell you when the fire started because I didn’t look at the time. I just know it has something to do with some panel. The Fire Chief has assured me that they will ensure it does not affect other parts of the complex.

“The offices are all intact, everybody is safe. Everybody ran out”.

She however, said, there was no difficulty accessing the floors by firemen as being spread by some workers.

“Rumour shouldn’t come at this time” urging the staff not to panic. As everything is going to be fine, as soon as the fire fighters tell us to move in then we will. We are already here for today’s work and it’s not the end of work day yet. They said it started on the fifth floor, it has to do with some panels but like I said people are not affected”, she said.

Public Relations Officer, Federal Fire Service, Mr. Elechi Collins, said The fire started around 1.35pm and nobody can say what caused it. And they are yet to ascertain the extent of damage.