Balogun Market Inferno

There was pandemonium at dawn in Lagos on Tuesday, January 13, as Lagosians woke up to the news that the famous Balogun market on Lagos Island has gone up in flames. IT’s the morning after, signposted only by the mourning. Balogun, the ever burstling market in Lagos State was a shadow of itself on Tusday. Gone were the bright faces that usually welcomed visitors. In its place were forlon looks, as traders, and passersby beheld the shadow of a billion-Naira market. About 24 hours earlier, there was pandemonium all over. Lagosians had woken up to the news that the famous Balogun market on Lagos Island had gone up in flames. Learning about the fire, big time merchants, importers and traders that ruled the market besieged Balogun Street, only to meet a barricade of police and fire fighters battling to bring the inferno under control. The fire, which razed a large area of Balogun and Gbadebo streets, the trading hub and nerve centre of business for decades, started about 3am, and there was very little the fire fighters could save. There is no clue yet on what led to the inferno, which some of the shop keepers and security operatives hinted might have been the result of electrical discharge, when power came on in the wee hours of the day. The smell of burning leather, plastics and textile products hung heavily in the air as the reporter approached Balogun Street from the Broad Street end. When Naijadoops  arrived, security men had barricaded the street from about 200 metres from the Broad Street end - six Lagos State Fire Service vehicles and two Rapid Response Squad (RSS) patrol vans formed part of the barricades, with security men milling around the scene, both preventing anxious and wailing traders from going in to assess their losses. A crane could be seen at work further down the street hoisting and shooting water directly onto the multi-storey buildings oozing thick black smoke into the atmosphere. The whole of Balogun Street was a sea of misery, chaos and wailings. Traders and business men, women, many of them young hawkers for their masters, could be seen sitting in rows and in silence; also young women, all commission sales persons, who eke out a living from what they sell. Gbajumo Street, off Davies Street, directly behind Balogun Street, is a haven of leather goods; the fire had engulfed a greater part of the street known for its wholesale trading activities, retail and hard bargain leather businesses. Alhaja Tura is one of the most grieved. Pushing 70, Tura has been in Balogun market since her middle age. She wept as she revealed that she has never dreamt one day that she would lose all her life’s labour to fire. Speaking in her native Yoruba dialect, Alhaja said she could not quantify her loss; all her life’s efforts and investment had perished before her eyes in her old age. Nothing can be more wicked, she lamented. “I’m finished,” said Sylvester Ike, an Aba businessman in his 40s whose shop had been razed. “My life is cut off and this is the end for me,” he wailed. A fair-complexioned young woman whom the Naijadoops  had trailed from Balogun to Gbajumo finally gathered enough wits to talk. She had been struggling with security men to allow her in to see what she could with her eyes, so that she would know what to report to ‘Alhaja’, but her demand was firmly turned down. Giving her name as Mrs. Sulaimon, she was in charge of Alhaja’s many shops. “Ah, what will I tell Alhaja?” she lamented. “The goods in that shop were more than N10 million. ‘Alhaja’ must not hear of this; what am I going to tell her?” ‘Alhaja’ turned out to be her mother; she had been the one running the chain of three shops - two on Gbajumo and the biggest one on Balogun - and all had been razed by the mysterious fire. “We took in market only on Monday. Then I was called up on phone on Tuesday that Balogun was on fire. I didn’t know how I got here. “The cash in the Balogun shop,” she seemed to have just remembered the cash, as she spoke, and held her head and screamed: ‘Yeeeeeh’. It was gathered that she had been selling for her mother since she left secondary school, over 15 years ago. Another of the women lamented that “Iya Ruka has heard thenews. She is still in shock. She has not spoken a word since yesterday. Her husband is the one keeping her inside, assuring her that it was not a serious fire and her area of the market was not affected. I just came from there. Baba has turned off the television and radio so that Iya Ruka will not hear any news. If Iya Ruka knows the truth, she would die.” “Mummy is not okay o,” another said. “How can she be okay? You cannot know what we are talking about. Six shops she has been building up for more than 20 years. All our lives are in that business, then all of them burnt down; just like that? I hope it is a dream.” An Igbo woman who gave her name as Ifeoma was biting her thumb in her grief when Naijadoops  approached her. She managed to tell her story. “They called me early in the morning that Balogun was burning o. I don’t know how that could happen because I have been selling in this market before I married; more than 10 years ago, and this kind of thing had never hap­ pened. “We were calling ourselves on phone and everybody run up here, but police will not let us in. See, everything is burnt. The shoes I have in my shop are more than 500 pairs; that is all my life,” Ifeoma sobbed. As she talked, a policeman on guard accompanied a young man holding wads of completely burnt out money, and Ifeoma exclaimed, pointing, “Look at money; our goods and money are all burnt.” She held her head in both hands and lamented in Igbo language: “O God, what will I do? This market is my life and my blood.” It was gathered that the heavy losses of merchandize, including cash, is the result of massive trading turnovers, especially those that come in the evenings. “Before you close, the banks have closed, so we are used to keeping huge amounts of money in the shops. This is Balogun market; everybody keeps cash over night, sometimes for many days. Then when the banks open, you go and put them there, but now,” she pointed, “all are gone, gone.” Ifeoma said she started as a sales girl in Balogun before she married, and it took a life time to build her business that has now gone up in flames. A second woman beside her, Monika, said she was able to reach her shop on Monday early enough to retrieve some of her cash. “I was here yesterday (Monday) and I rushed there inside the fire, recovered part of my money in the drawer, but the rest got burnt with all my shoes.” Many of the victims said they had never experienced this tragedy in Balogun market. “I used to hear of fire in other places, even that one that happened in Great Nigeria House, but it never happened to me,” Ifeoma wondered. “How can this kind of thing hit us when we are just beginning a New Year?” Seeing the despair on the faces of the crowd and traders, you know that their losses in the last two days can never be quantified. It is a colossal loss. According to Ifeoma, “everybody lost everything…from this part to that place, fire is burning; nobody could save anything. Evil visited us today.” The big time losers Top Igbo and Hausa business men were the biggest los­ ers. Naijadoops  gathered that some of them have not fully resumed business this January, as they traveled abroad. Others are still taking their time before they resume, but their sales managers and apprentice sales- boys have been up and doing, since the second week of the new year. Naijadoops  tried to get word from an importer of textile who was said to have opened four container loads on Monday; he was unable to speak a word. His boys could not take him away from the scene, so they just gathered around him and mourned over the destruction of their business empire. One of his boys was able to give a hint of his master’s loss. “We used to offload two containers every Thursday and Friday but, last Monday, because of the holidays, we opened four containers. Customers have paid and we were sorting out their orders for them to collect from day break, when the fire started. Now all those are gone.” Mr. Innocent Ikeguonu, one of the top importers there said nobody can know what this disaster is, “many of us cannot even feel it yet.” This may well be so as most of Balogun traders do not carry insurance covers for their businesses; even cash- in-transit covers are few and far between. Panic calls were still being made when our correspondent left the scene. Some of the business owners are not even in Lagos yet…they had to be informed on phone. Balogun market is as old as Lagos Island, all markets from Idumota, Nnamdi Azikiwe Street, Martins, Davies, Gbajumo, even the very corporate Broad Street all flow into Balogun market. Many businesses on the mainland draw their life-line and resources from the razed market.

Posted by Donatus Joshua at 01:55