UNCOMMON TRAGEDY: FIVE BURNT TO DEATH FROM FIRE OUTBREAK IN SULEJA!

It was an arena of tears and sorrow on the 22nd January, 2015 at Chenchenya area of Suleja, Niger State, when five members of a family of eight including the father, got burnt to death in an eccentric inferno that broke out around 11.00pm.

Nobody actually knew the cause of the fire outbreak as even the three fortunate survivors couldn't tell the genesis of the whole scenario. What the eyewitnesses could only say was that they saw the uncontrollable inferno around 11.00pm with voices of dying people crying from within.

According to the story from one of the survivors, the family head, Mallam Usman who had two wives, managed to rescue his younger wife with her only daughter and his younger brother who lived with them, at the early stage of the inferno. While they were outside the house on fire, the yells and cries of his elder wife and her three kids didn't allow him any composure as it was obvious that they were totally trapped in the burning flame and needed soccour. Even as the situation seemed not salvaging as the weight of the burning flame was uncontrollably unbearable, Mallam Usman went against all odds and hopped into the heavy flame of fire in a bid to rescue his second family. 

                                    The burnt building...everything burnt completely

The situation that made Mallam Usman hopped back into the inferno to save his family would've been averted if only the sorrowful screams: " laillah ilallah...laillah ilallah...laillah ilallah..." was not on continuous echo that attracted every ears around. He dived into the fire unconsciously but the salvaging and soccour mission which he intended was never accomplished. He was consumed by the fire along his first wife and three children. As at the time the fire burnt out completely in the morning, Mallam Usman was found holding the window protector in his elder wife's room in a burnt skeletal body. His elder wife was discovered with her four months old baby on her chest, both burnt to skeletal statures on a completely burnt mattress. The two other little girls both got burnt separately on the floor...it was an extreme horror to behold.

According to the sympathetic throng that gathered around the vicinity at the early morning hours of the next day of the incidence, it took a wholesome efforts of the 'mairuwa'numbering over twenty who came with their wheelbarrows filled with jerrycans of water to hinder the inferno from spreading to the other houses in the neighbourhood. They became the fire service locally as no known fire fighters are presently available for such tragic incidence at that area of Suleja.

Suleja is a suburb of Abuja, apparently the second largest town and the commercial nerve centre of Niger State, North Central, Nigeria. It was formerly the town called Abuja before the name was donated to the new seat of power in 1976 and thereafter renamed as Suleja just as we have it today. Historically, only few Nigerians know that the current Abuja was actually planned and plotted in Suleja.

By: Sadoh M. S.