"Fire Tragedy in Nigeria"
If PHCN had been stable with power,
they would not have died

About past midnight, the duo of Yinka, 26, and Ade, 24, stood up, said good-night to their friends, Tobi and Lanre, and went to their rooms upstairs. But their good-nights seemed to be forever. Just some minutes after the household retired to sleep, there was a panic call from the security guards outside –– there was a fire outbreak and the living-room upstairs was emitting smoke. ”I slept downstairs with Lanre when the mai-guard alerted us to the fire around 1am and we tried to go upstairs to check Yinka and Ade, but the fire was already spreading to the stairs and we could not gain access,” recalled Tobi Emeke, a friend of Ade.

When the situation was getting out of control, a call was quickly made to the fire-fighting unit. He said, “They came like 20 minutes after but, before then, we had already started shouting Yinka and Ade‘s names to ascertain their safety, but there was no response. It was really hard climbing through the stairs because there was no electricity and the entire house was engulfed in smoke. The fumes engulfed everywhere and we kept calling their names. At a point, another fire-fighting truck came around 2.30am and helped put out the fire.”

Lanre Ogunmuyiwa, one of the friends, who also lived in the house, recalled the May 14 inferno, saying, “Even the fire-fighters were scared to access the rooms when they got upstairs but I used a damp cloth, covered my nostrils and entered Ade’s room.

“The smoke was too strong and I ran out. We later discovered Ade in the bathroom; maybe he was looking for an escape route and was trapped there. By the time we got to Yinka‘s room, he was on the floor facing the direction of the air-conditioner, maybe the fumes got too strong and he thought he could get air through there.

”With a few burns, we knew we had lost Yinka, but Ade did not have any burns and we thought he passed out due to the smoke. Immediately, we took them to the King‘s Care Hospital, Wuse, where the doctor told us Ade was dead. We later took the bodies to the mortuary.”

Born of the same parents, Adeyinka Johnson celebrated his 26th birthday on May 4, 2008. Ademijuwon Ojo would have celebrated his 24th year on June 26, but he never lived to see the day.

Both were of the Oshikola ruling house of Ile-Ife, Osun State, and both lived with their father, Prince Johnson Ojo Adedini, chairman of the Fasanboye Group of Companies. ”I was home till about 5pm on Monday, but had to leave due to the incessant power outage by the Power Holding Company of Nigeria. We had to put on the generator like six times and I left home in annoyance for a meeting.

”I was there till one of my sons‘ friends called and informed me about a fire incident at home and immediately, I also contacted the fire-fighting unit and was told that they had gone to my house. The information I was given was that there was a power surge from one of the sockets in the living-room upstairs and there was an inferno. I rushed home but then, the deed had been done.

I lost my two sons to a circumstance that could have been avoided. They were my wife‘s only sons - she had three of them. The first is a girl but the last two boys are now dead,” he said.

According to him, he had fallen victim of a corrupt and decayed system. ”If the PHCN had been stable with electricity, this would not have happened. Three houses had been razed down in our estate due to this epileptic power supply and we had a family friend who lost everything to fire. Though their lives were saved, they lost everything to the fire. Not in my wildest imagination did it occur to me that I would fall a victim too. These boys had promising careers and were full of life,” Prince Adedini, the deceased‘s father lamented.

Indeed, their lives and careers would have been enviable. ”Yinka was a 300Level student of Agric Economics at the Igbinedion University. He was full of life, energetic and was having his internship at Verreaux Technologies Ltd. in Ceddi Plaza. He was meant to go back to school last Thursday, but stayed behind. He was the older of the two and good at Information and Communication Technology. He was working with his uncle in Abuja and was quite hard-working,” Tobi recalled.

Just next to their parents bedroom, the charred remains of Yinka‘s room displayed a burnt laptop, some clothes on the bed, the used-to-be-white walls turned black and broken window glass. Mysteriously, the mattress was intact, even the clothes on it. The poor guy must have been choked with the billowing smokes. ”He was such a hardworking guy and was the one who took delivery of a set of new laptops on Monday in the office. Yinka was lively, he was a staff every employer wanted and, being his uncle, I saw potential in him. He would have made an impact in the ICT world here at Verreaux. Nothing gave any inkling that we would not see him on Tuesday morning at the office,” Prince Adeboye Subulade, the chief operating officer at Verreaux Technologies, said.

Ade’s room had clothes in a charred Nokia-branded bag, had some Nokia branded souvenirs, a little book entitled: Productive Thinking by David Abioye lay on his bed. Another book, Winning Faith, by David Oyedepo, adorned his bed-side table and a Bible.

”He was very spiritually-inclined and never joked with the things of God. He was a staunch member of the Living Faith Church aka, Winners Chapel, Durumi, Abuja and I remember the last time we went to Enugu for a conference. He made sure he looked for a Living Faith Church to attend the all-night liberation service. Ademijuwon stuck to Ojo, their surname, but Yinka stuck to their father‘s first name, Johnson. Maybe he was more comfortable with that.

”Ade, as we fondly called him, was a graduate of Babcock University and we all read accounting. He worked in Nokia/CMS Nigeria Ltd as a brand retail consultant. He had already registered his own company, Giant-strides Telecoms and planned branching out to start his company. He was full of dreams! He was very enterprising and he was crazy about telecoms. He introduced us –– his friends –– to the Nokia Company, where we all work. Ade was hard-working and was nominated for the best representative award at the last Nokia conference in Enugu.

”He was a real source of motivation and very accommodating. Most of our colleagues and class-mates would prefer to sleep in their Ade’s) house anytime they visited Abuja for anything. He was such a friendly guy that he had enough exotic cars from friends for use during his elder sister‘s wedding in March. He was up and doing and a good organiser. He was a brother I had who was not from the same mother,” a distraught Tobi said.

Was there any premonition? Did the deceased show signs of the evil to come? Lanre recalled, ”There was none except from their elder sister, Toke Johnson. She had called on Monday morning and asked what was wrong and we all answered in the negative. She said a friend had called her on phone that she visited the house and felt something was wrong. But there was nothing wrong and we assured her of everyone‘s safety. That was in the morning and we all went out, came back in the evening and the incident took place around midnight.”

Even their father felt uneasy. ”Despite the fact that I left home angrily because of PHCN, I was not at ease where I went, and people kept pestering me to take a drink, but I was not at peace. Not that I felt something evil happened, but I was very dull till I received the emergency call,” he said.

Last Friday, a candle-light/testimony service held at the deceased home in Abacha Estate. Their remains were buried at the Gudu Cemetery, Abuja. “Their mother is in Ile-Ife and my tears are for her,” Prince Adedini, whose first wife is dead, said. ”For 32 years, she has been with me. We weathered the storm together in bringing up these kids and now that they are adults, they left without saying good-bye.

”This is like the sore of a diabetic - it can never be cured. I am asking God to comfort her and heal her wounds because nobody can. I believe in God. I believe in his acts and I believe in his words. This is an act of God but it is a pain in our lives. Losing two grown up sons at the same time in the same house we all lived? Only God can heal us all.”

Culled from Punch Newspaper.