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.
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