Calamity struck the people of Oyo early hours today as inferno razed the popular Akesan Market , the town major commercial centre.


The tragedy could have been curtailed before excalation assuming the fire service station near the market had responded swiftly to the raging fire incident when the inferno started around 2 am.


Whatever the excuse the fire service may want to give, the fact remains that the conduct and performance of Fire Service Station in Oyo serves as a reminder that this country still lacks proper disaster management system. It exposes the fact that government lacks the capacity to respond effectively to emergency situations.


With this ugly development which was worsen by lack of government capacity, the livelihoods of hundreds of families with their dependents had been put into jeopardy.


When I visited the market this morning,I saw an heritage lost and billions worth of investments destroyed.Unfortunately,the market women hardly subscribed to safety net insurance for necessary recourse giving billions of goods and quantum of fund invested and already lost to the inferno.


Only God can wipe the tears of the victims but the government has the responsibility to curshion the effect and provide relief to the affected traders.


While some sympathizers were making frantic efforts to help the shop owners quench the fire outbreak,some hoodlums were trying to loot. Regrettably, the police in an effort to prevent looting of shops that were yet to be engulfed by fire had a kind of running battle with hoodlums and three people died in the process.This raises the question of poor crises management technique by the police.It is still a pursue the reason for the use of fire arms in dispersing people from the scene of fire incident.


This is a sad moment for the people of Oyo. As people continue to weep over the collosal loss by the traders whose businesses had already been consumed by the fire disaster, I appeal to the state government , local governments, political office holders and philanthropists to kindly come to the rescue of the victims.

We all need to rally round to provide succur to the victims.

Source: https://gistmile..com/2020/01/black-sunday-in-oyo-as-akesan-market.html

More images of the incident