NPA Set-up Committee To Investigate Tin Can Fire Outbreak

…Tenants Allege Connivance, No Electricity for 5 years

By Kenneth Jukpor

Nigerian Ports Authority has constituted a committee to investigate the recent fire outbreak which swept the Containerized Complex at Tin Can, in January.

Members of the committee include representatives from NPA and Seaview Properties, officers of the Fire Service, Nigerian Police, etc., however, it is shocking that the tenants and leadership at the Tin Can Containerized Complex have been neglected.

The exemption of the leadership at the Tin Can Containerized Complex is said to be in contrast with the Managing Director of NPA, Ms. Hadiza Bala-Usman’s instructions as she had directed that some members of the Containerized Complex be part of the investigative committee when she visited the location.

The committee has begun meetings without a single person representing the tenants at the complex, but it has invited the Chairman of the Complex for interrogation on several occasions.

The Chairman of the Containerized Complex, Chief Pauly Shedrack revealed this during an exclusive chat with MMS Plus.

He said; “I thought the reason some members of the committee visited the complex few weeks ago was to get some occupants at the Complex to join the committee. But they only came here to inform me that they had set-up the committee and told me that they would invite me to answer some questions. They invited me for questioning and I was there.”

“However, I’m baffled that such a committee would be constituted without anybody from the complex especially after the promises of the NPA Managing Director that we would be part of that committee” he said.

Chief Shedrack also lamented that the Containerized Complex had been disconnected from power supply for the past five years as occupants solely depend on their power generating sets.

Meanwhile, another occupant at the Complex who witnessed the fire incident alleged that the fire may not have been an accident as the fire started on the roof of one of the offices and

“The way the fire incident occurred raises suspicion. The roofs of the containers were just going up in flames as if there was something triggering it from the top of the roofs. These are metal roofs not wooden; so it is difficult to understand how they got burnt in such manner. Someone must have deliberately started that fire; but we await the findings from the NPA investigative team”, the source who only revealed his identity as Segun stated.

All efforts to get the Corporate Communication Department of the NPA to disclose the development on the investigation and react to this worrisome turn of events proved abortive as at press time.

 

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