A fire incident has destroyed 19 shops, which housed 1,900 bags of assorted grains, at a market in Gombi, a prominent town located 123 kilometres north of the Adamawa state capital, Yola.
Speaking on the incident, Mallam Umar Nyalli, the Secretary of the affected grains market union, revealed that an unknown smoker triggered the destructive fire by discarding a burning cigarette near a pile of waste materials close to the shops.
He said: “The businesses of the 19 shop owners have been paralyzed. Nothing could be retrieved from their wares. We lost bags of maize, groundnuts, guinea corn, sesame seeds, beans, and tamarin fruits to the inferno.”
He appealed for help from governments at all levels and from public-spirited individuals.
The state deputy governor, Professor Kaletapwa George Farauta, who commiserated with the affected traders, said the losses were huge.
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She, however, asked the traders to believe that God would revamp their businesses and asked relevant authorities to enlighten citizens to shun improper handling of fire.
The Nation reports that the Gombi incident was the second of its type in two weeks within Adamawa State.
A wildfire on the 6th of this month destroyed wares in 10 shops near the Federal College of Education, Yola.
In the Yola incident, someone had set fire to a nearby bush, resulting in the spread of an inferno to the ill-fated shops.
