Two siblings, Paul 4, and his sister 1, have been burnt to death after fire gutted a bungalow in the Igbo-Efon, Lekki area of Lagos State on Saturday. PUNCH  was told that the fire began from a cooking stove which exploded in the bungalow where the victims lived with their parents. The inferno was said to have quickly spread and torched the room where the children were.


The mother of the children fled the area and called for help, but the children could not be saved.

Firefighters and other officials of the Lagos State Fire Service and National Emergency Management Agency were on ground during the incident.

The Director of the Lagos State Fire Service, Rasak Fadipe, said the agency was not alerted on time, adding that when firefighters got to the scene, they only met the charred remains of the victims.

He said: "The fire started around 5am, and it involved a bungalow on 11, Fabiyi Street, Igbo Efon. The bungalow has a two and a three bedroom flats.

"We were alerted to the incident exactly 6.03am and when we got there, we still met the fire raging. We deployed our men from the Eti-Osa and Onikan divisions in the area. However, when they got there, they only saw the corpses of the kids; they had suffered severe burns injuries. Preliminary investigations reveal that the children’s father was not around, but their mother was. They were preparing a meal on the stove, when the stove exploded. The children could not escape it and that was how they were burnt to death."

Fadipe said an uncle of the victim called the ambulance service which conveyed them to the mortuary, adding that the tragedy was avoidable if precaution had been taken by the children’s parents.