Blackened palm oil flowed across the wet market walkway. Burnt roofing sheets hung loosely over collapsed wooden stalls. Damaged freezers, melted buckets of rice, scorched cartons of tomatoes, and warped metal doors lay in heaps. Traders wandered through the debris in stunned silence, some clutching keys to shops that no longer existed.
Around 1 a.m. on 19 May, a fire broke out near the market fence at one of the container shops used as a cold room, according to witnesses. Within minutes, the flames spread through makeshift structures crowded against the perimeter of one of Akwa Ibom’s busiest daily markets – the Akpan Andem Market in Uyo, the state capital.
But while the fire advanced, residents and traders said the closest emergency response unit, a fire station inside the market, could not respond.
The reason, according to multiple witnesses and fire service officials interviewed by PREMIUM TIMES, is that there was no diesel to power the firefighting truck.
By the time federal firefighters eventually arrived hours later, traders, desperately fighting to put out the raging inferno, had formed human chains with buckets and basins. Residents fetched water from nearby homes. A hotel in the area supplied additional water. By then, millions of naira in goods had already been reduced to ashes.
