A female students’ hotel at the Ekehuan campus of the University of Benin was on Tuesday gutted by fire.
The inferno, reports said, destroyed some documents and properties at the university.
A source told the News Agency of Nigeria that the incident, which started at midday, however, claimed no life.
While an account said the cause of the fire could not be ascertained, another source said it was ignited by a surge from an electric cooker, popularly known as ‘hot plate’, that one of the female students was using.
According to the source, the attention of the fire service in the state was drawn to the incident on time and its men were on the ground to extinguish the fire.
When contacted, the Public Relations Officer of the University, Dr. Benedicta Ehanire, declined comment.
The state fire service is also yet to comment on the incident.
Editor’s Note
In our post on February 19, 2023, in a story ‘Woman burns self to death over failure to offset N70,000 loan’, we reported that a middle-aged woman, simply known as Mama Dada, set herself ablaze over her inability to pay back a loan of N70,000 she reportedly took from a microfinance bank, LAPO. We have since discovered that the microfinance bank referred to in the story was not LAPO Microfinance Bank Limited. We apologise to the LAPO Group for the error in the identification of the name of the said microfinance bank where the deceased took the loan. The mix-up in the name of the MFB is not deliberate.
