Lagos State governor, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu, on Sunday ordered a full-scale investigation into the cause of the fire incident that gutted the popular Amu Plank Market and a total of houses and goods worth over N10 billion, in Mushin area of the state.
The governor gave this order when he visited the market with his deputy, Dr Obafemi Hamzat, and other members of his cabinet, even as he lamented the huge losses recorded in the market inferno, describing the incident as very unfortunate and losses suffered as unimaginable.
He said relevant government agencies had been mobilised to take inventory of the situation and report back to the government.
“This is rather very unfortunate incident, nobody ever imagined this amount of destruction to happen in this market. We will also further start a full investigation into the remote causes of this fire incident so that we can plan in future how to forestall incident like this.
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“After the Lagos State Emergency Agency (LASEMA) and other agencies have finished their physical process, we will come back with Ministry of Physical Planning to take inventory of the various store owners in this place and also sit with our market leaders to see what kind of lasting solution that we can bring about in markets like this.
“We will do enumeration of the houses affected by the fire incident. Then the government will go back and see what support it can render. We thank God that it is only goods that were lost, no life was lost. Because we cannot equate the life of anybody to any amount of goods and services,” the governor said.
Sanwo-Olu, however, allayed the fears of the traders that the government would not take over their market, assuring that the government would rather help to rebuild the market.
The traders, who spoke at separate interviews during the visit, had appealed to the governor to support them to go back to their businesses and help in rebuilding the market.
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