ARMSTRONG ALLAHMAGANI, Bauchi –
No fewer than 14 offices belonging to about 20 lecturers at the Faculty of Agriculture, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU), Bauchi have been totally destroyed following a fire outbreak Wednesday night.
Findings by NATIONAL ACCORD reveal that although lives were not lost or anyone injured, but properties worth millions of Naira were lost to the fire that happened at the Gubi Permanent site of the institution.
The fire was said to have caused serious panic among students who were in the school reading at the time the incident happened.
A staff of the institution who did not want to be named, said that the fire, which started at about 8pm lasted for about two hours before it was put out by a combined team of Fire Service personnel from the ATBU, Nigerian Air Force, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa International Airport and the State Service.
“We suspect that it was caused by electrical fault because some of the students there said the heard a loud sound coming from the building.
“The ATBU Fire Service, that of the Nigerian Air Force, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa International Airport and even that of the State Government, were all there.
“The fire started at about 8pm and lasted for about two hours,” he said.
A Lecturer at the Department of Agriculture who refused to be mentioned, said his office was one of those affected lamenting that all he had in his office were destroyed by the fire
He said “I didn’t know that there was a fire incident in our office last night. It was just this (Thursday) morning that I went to the office, only to see the whole place razed down by the fire.
“We the younger lecturers have our offices at the upstairs of the building. The way the fire engulfed the place, even the metal things there have lost there strength.
“There is nothing left in our offices from tables to chairs, everything was totally razed down. Properties belonging to the school were burnt down and our personal properties too were destroyed beyond remedy.”
The lecturer added that: “The place is like a hall and our offices were partitioned with plywood and I think we have more than 20 lecturers with offices there and everything was lost to the fire upstairs but the fire didn’t affect the ground floor because the fire was contained.
“The nature of the offices, the plywood used for the partitioning of the offices, encouraged the fire because the building is old, about 20 years old.
“Those offices have plenty of books, I also have many personal books in my office, more like a mini-library, all of them were gone. All these books aided the fire.”
He described the incident as a great loss because all his personal properties in his office were destroyed by the fire.
“It is a serious loss. For me, it is more of an emotional trauma because there are things I cannot recover again. I have conference attendance, journals, other documents that show you have handled some responsibilities and many others, all of them are gone,” he lamented.
He said that the school management assured them that their offices would be replaced immediately adding that they said they are working on that “but for today, we are all without offices.”
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