About fifty Shops at Abule-Egba area of Lagos gut fire on Monday.

The fire which occurred at the Abule Egba Wood Market, also involved two vehicles – a commercial bus and a Toyota saloon car parked in the market.

According to a witness, a power surge in one of the burnt shops started the fire.

Director of the Lagos State Fire Service, Rasaq Fadipe, who confirmed the incident said that the fire service were dispatched to the scene to cut the fire from where it was heading and were able to contain it to the arena.

“So far, fifty shops, made up of iron sheets, planks, cutting machines and other building materials in a row of three, were consumed by the fire. No life was lost, neither was anyone injured.”

The section of the Abule Egba Wood Market that was burnt is already being rebuilt. The fire happened at midnight on Monday, and by noon reconstruction had begun.

“Work has to go on,” says Olawale who owns a stall at the market. “People lost so much. Now everyone has to go back to work.”

Apart from the wood traders, some people doing some other business near the market lost their business to the fire.

Bimpe’s restaurant was completely burnt down, and she lost ‘millions’. But today she’s back to where her restaurant used to be, and she’s trying to restart her business from scratch.

“Yesterday when I got here and saw what happened, I was very shattered. My four freezers and everything else were gone. A lot of us borrowed money from the bank and we had just put in a lot of money in our businesses. Some people collapsed yesterday. It was a terrible experience.

“I shouldn’t be here today, but I thought if I stayed at home I might go crazy. That’s why I decided to come and start again and sell some food. I lost my livelihood, but I have to start from somewhere again.”

In May this year, a power surge from electric cables in the vegetable oil section of Daleko market in Mushin Local Government Area, razed about 120 shops, with goods worth millions of naira destroyed.