Edo Education Ministry Guts on Fire!

A mysterious fire yesterday gutted a building at the Edo State Ministry of Education, Iyaro in Benin City.
The fire was said to have started at about 6am from a section of the building adjacent to the Office of the Commissioner for Higher Education, Washington Osifo.
More than 10 offices at the upper floor of the building were razed.
The affected building was said to be housing vital documents, including certificates dating back to the Mid-West Region.
Scripts of the recently conducted primary school leaving certificate examination were said to have been consumed.
Eyewitnesses said men of the State Fire Service could not put out the fire because of inadequate water.
The witnesses said before the firemen returned, the fire had spread to other offices.
When The Nation visited the scene, workers were seen running around with buckets of water; some were discussing; others were wailing.
Osifo said sensitive documents that dated back to the 1960s were destroyed.
He said: “I was called early yesterday morning that there was a fire here.
“I contacted the Fire Service and we tried to battle the fire. The offices that accommodated sensitive materials that dated back to the Mid-West Region are gone. There is no trace of such documents. That is a disaster.
“We will not want to make any sweeping statement. The panel of inquiry to be set-up will reveal what happened. We succeeded in stopping the fire from spreading to other places.”
Governor Adams Oshiomhole said the government will set up a commission of enquiry on the fire.
He spoke when he visited the ministry yesterday.
“It seems to me that there might be a case of arson. Somebody must have chosen to destroy some documents for whatever purpose for which we don’t know.
“If there was no light at the time, then the question of possible electrical fault does not arise and it is possible that somebody had planted something, maybe to burn the place, to destroy some evidence or something.
“I think the thing to do is to set up a panel to establish what went wrong, at least to prevent a recurrence and to find out those who might be responsible. It is very unfortunate.
“One lesson we should learn from this is that we should not keep important documents on the last floor of a storey building.”