Fire destroys Kano furniture market, part of Jos Central Mosque

Furniture worth about N15million has been burnt by a midnight fire at Gandu Furniture Market in Kano Municipal Council of Kano State.
In another fire incident, the women wing of the Jos Central Mosque, including an Islamic school building was destroyed.
Describing how the Kano furniture market fire started, chairman of the market,
Mr Steven Kalu Elem said he was called around 5 am that the market had caught fire. “I rushed down but before I could reach the place the fire had razed about 15 shops with furniture worth about N15million,” he said.
He said they could not say specifically what the source of the fire was but that they were suspecting a group of armed robbers who tried to raid the market earlier that night but were chased out by the vigilante men. “We are suspecting that it could be these robbers that came back to light the fire that destroyed the shops.
Elem said a similar incident occurred last year in November when many of their members lost their materials and money, and appealed to government to assist them because those affected have lost everything they possessed in this particular fire.
Speaking on the Jos Mosque fire, the deputy Chairman of the Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI) in Jos North LGA and custodian of the Mosque, Alhaji Danjummai Khalid, debunked the rumour that the Jos Central Mosque was destroyed by the inferno, saying, “The fire affects only the female side and is a separate building behind the main Central Mosque. The Nigeria Fire Service and other volunteers have put off the fire because about five fire fighting vehicles partook in the fire fighting effort.”
Danjummai said that the fire emanated from second hand furniture stores behind the women wing of the Mosque around 2:05pm, adding that the fire destroyed virtually all the female side of the mosque and classes of an Islamic school at the top floor of the building.
A security man at the central mosque who is a member of First Aid Group of JNI, Jamilu Muhammad, told Daily Trust that scores of volunteers sustained various degrees of injuries in the course of putting off the fire.