Abuja Building Materials Market Inferno Destroys Millions in Traders’ Goods

A fire outbreak has destroyed shops and goods worth millions of naira at Eda Plaza, a building materials market in Jabi, Abuja, leaving traders counting heavy losses.

The fire reportedly started in the early hours of Sunday, with an eyewitness saying an alarm was raised around 3am after traders were alerted that the plaza was on fire.

The affected plaza is located opposite Chida Hotel in Jabi, one of Abuja’s busy commercial areas.

An eyewitness who spoke to NTA said his brother-in-law, who owns two shops and a packing store in the plaza, received a distress call from a colleague about the fire.

By the time they reached the scene, the fire had already spread extensively. According to the eyewitness, only one of the two shops was saved, while the second shop and the packing store were completely destroyed.

The scale of the losses was significant, with the eyewitness saying roofing materials worth more than ₦20 million were destroyed. Some of the affected goods had reportedly only recently been restocked.

The Federal Fire Service confirmed that it received a distress call about the incident at 2:46am, identifying it as the Eda Plaza fire.

Firefighters were deployed to the scene as efforts were made to prevent the flames from spreading further through the building materials market.

The full extent of the financial damage is yet to be established, as traders are expected to assess their individual losses after the fire.

There has also been no official confirmation of the cause of the fire at the time of the latest reports. Investigations will be needed to determine how the blaze started and what may have caused it to spread so quickly.

For the affected traders, the incident means the loss of goods, business capital and, in some cases, investments built over several years.

The Abuja fire has once again drawn attention to the vulnerability of markets and commercial plazas to major fire outbreaks, particularly where large quantities of combustible materials are stored.

As traders begin the difficult process of taking stock of what was lost, attention will now turn to the authorities’ investigation and whether measures can be taken to prevent another major market fire in the nation’s capital.

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