Late night inferno guts Akwa Ibom supermarket

Foreign goods, estimated at over billions of naira have been destroyed by a late night fire which gutted the popular Nteps supermarket at 107, Oron road Uyo, the Akwa Ibom state capital at the weekend.

According to one of the four night security guards attached to the supermarket, who would not want his name in print, the fire broke out at between 10:30 and 11:00 pm on Friday, when sales for the day had already been concluded and the two facility shut against customers.

According to him, “We had already left the main building hosting the supermarket to the other building at the back, before we could notice that the two-storey building had been in flames for about 10 minutes and we were only alerted when people passing on the road started raising the alarm.

“At that point, we made frantic calls to the state fire service but it took several hours for them to arrive but with no enough water to contain the raging fire which started from the top floor where the warehouse is located and billions of foreign goods stored for routine movement to the main store for customers, we had to also call the federal fire service and they arrived a little late to be able to salvage anything,” he added.

Although he said the fire started from the electrical inverter, he did not rule out sabotage from other competitors.

It was learnt the business owner from the popular Ntekpere family in Obot Akara Local Government Area was not around the premises at the time of the incident.