Alhaji Razaq Zubair, a septuagenarian, was killed in a fire incident that hit his house on penultimate Wednesday. According to a Emeka Okenwa, a tenant in late Alhaji Zubair’s house, the night of the incident was like any other. Darkness enveloped the yard and the surroundings since electricity supply to the area was rare. Emeka, a graduate of Chemical Engineering from the Federal University of Technology (FUTO), Owerri, Imo State, told Daily Sun that he sat outside the building to enjoy the night breeze.

Lost in thoughts over what the future held for him after attending a job interview earlier in the day, he was jolted back to reality by the shouts of fire! fire! by people in the neighbouring compound. Initially, his thinking was that the fire outbreak was in one of the adjoining houses until he heard an explosion apparently caused by the air conditioning unit in the landlord’s sitting room.

At that point, he ran inside the house to alert his co-tenants that the house was on fire. “Immediately, I ran upstairs to the landlord’s apartment. On getting there, I met the door locked. I started banging on the door, hoping that somebody would respond. One of the boys living with him, however, struggled to open the door. By the time I entered the sitting room, the whole place was filled with a thick smoke. I made straight to the room of the landlord’s son, which was also full of smoke and was able to drag him out of the apartment; he was almost unconscious. The landlord’s son, Azeez by name, could only manage to utter the words:‘Baba is inside, Baba is inside.’

“I made another effort to locate where the landlord was lying only to be shaken by another explosion. This time, the blast came from the cylinder of the fridge in the deceased’s dining section. It was at that point I gave up on making any further move. Then, I ran downstairs to meet other neighbours who had started shouting for help and calling the men of the fire service on phone.”

According to Emeka, he was able to salvage some documents, belonging to the landlord’s son before fire fighters later arrived at the building about 11.45 pm. Since he was more familiar with the building, Emeka said he had to follow them inside the building to give them directions on how they could possibly rescue the landlord, who was trapped inside. Even though the fire fighters put out the fire eventually, the landlord’s body could still not be located that night, owing to the thick smoke and the smouldering debris of the structure, which had fallen inside the apartment.

He said it was not until the next morning during another search for Alhaji Razaq that his body was found in a corner in the sitting room. “I think he might have been suffocated by the smoke after he struggled to come out of his bedroom,” Emeka told Daily Sun sombrely.

Alhaji was buried according to Islamic rites the following day. In his graveside sermon during the burial, the officiating Imam, Alhaji Abdul Azeez, stressed that life and its many struggles were ephemeral. He described Alhaji Razaq as a devout Muslim who gave his all for the advancement of the work of Allah. Admonishing the gathering to learn from Alhaji Razaq’s life, Abdul Azeez reminded them that among other things over which man had no control was that man cannot determine when, where and how he would die. In addition, no man can predetermine where an individual will be buried, he noted. Therefore, he admonished the sympathisers to amend their ways, noting that no one knows the hour or minute when one’s soul would be required of them.

As the children performed the dust-to-dust rite, he urged them to emulate the good deeds of their father. Meanwhile, none of the bereaved family members, including the children, obliged to speak with Daily Sun as they were still overtaken by grief. Rather, one of the deceased’s children directed this reporter to Emeka, who witnessed the incident.