Tejuosho Market: Traders Loses Over N1bn To Fire Breakout

On Wednesday, traders at the Tejuosho Market in Yaba, Lagos State, bemoaned a fire event that devastated their stalls and destroyed equipment and commodities worth a billion naira.

The Yaba Goshen Clothing Plaza, often referred to as The Kitchen, was completely destroyed by the fire that occurred on Tuesday.

According to eyewitness accounts, the generator stand at the plaza’s rear was where the fire originated.

When our correspondent went to the market on Wednesday, she saw that the stalls and equipment were nothing more than ashes and shreds.

As others sobbed with their hands on their heads as sympathetic bystanders comforted them, a number of stall owners were spotted lugging the burned remnants of their equipment.

Godswill Okorie, the plaza’s owner, said that the entire structure burned down in less than 30 minutes.

He said, “I was called immediately the fire started. I got here within five minutes and in less than 30 minutes, the plaza was down. Everyone ran out because they were trapped. The whole plaza went down, but no life was lost.

“This place is big and houses over 1,000 people every day. The open space was a hall divided into small stalls and shops and we had 150 stalls that contained about six to eight traders per stall. Six people mean six industrial machines. We produce clothes, sell to boutiques in Lagos and outside Nigeria. From 5am every day, this place is already booming. We even sell to the United States of America. We have lost over a billion naira. One of my tenants here just bought two machines that cost N1.7m. All the materials, machines and money are scraps now.”

A trader, Chukwu Oje, who had two shops and nine workers, said he did not know where to begin again.

He said, “This happened around 3pm. I need assistance; this is the only place I earn my living and now everything is gone. I do not even know where to start. Let people come to our rescue.”

Another victim, Mercy Emenike, who spoke amid tears, said her customers from Liberia sent her materials that she had sown 200 clothes, adding that the fire destroyed both the sown clothes and the materials.

She said, “I have nothing to do, I only look unto God and encourage myself. My God! I have lost almost a million in my shops, with cash. Three machines worth N600,000 and my generator.”

She blamed their lack of regular power supply for the fire.

“People buy fuel and store it because we work 24 hours here. If we had regular power supply, people would not store fuel and this would not have happened,” she added.