The federal secretariat complex in Abuja which houses major government offices, such as ministries, departments and agencies, caught on fire earlier on Thursday, May 14, 2015.
The fire was reported to have started from the sixth floor and later extended to the seventh and eighth floors. The fire caused panic to those that were in and around the building as workers at the secretariat took to their heels and fled to safety.
According to reports, although there were no casualties, it took a while after the fire started for employees trapped in the building on the floors where the fire engulfed to be taken out. What further made a bad situation worse is the fact that some of the elevators in the building are in poor conditions.
Daily Sun reports that eyewitnesses said service men arrived the scene less than an hour after the fire started. The floor the fire started from is the one occupied by the Federal Ministry of Education. He said the timely intervention of the fire fighters might have saved the nation from what could have been a major disaster.
The cause of the inferno is still unknown. “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.”
