A man identified as Dr. Isaac Ojukwu has died in a fire incident at the Boundary Plaza Hotel in Nyanya, a satellite town in the Federal Capital Territory.
It was gathered that the incident which occurred on Thursday almost razed down the hotel, but for the intervention of the Federal Fire Service personnel.
It was learnt that the charred remains of Ojukwu had been deposited in the Asokoro General Hospital by the police.
Lodgers in the hotel alleged that the deceased set himself ablaze.
An eyewitness, Ohize Yakubu, who has been living in the hotel apartment since 2013, said neighbours made frantic effort to pull the deceased out of the building but he struggled and ran back into the burning room.
He said, “We went to watch Arsenal and Bayern match that night, I came back to the hotel and Dr. Isaac came in 5 minutes later. After some minutes, I started hearing strange sound from his room, which is directly opposite my room. He was not shouting loud enough, all I could hear was ‘yeh’, ‘yeh’.
“At first, I was scared to open the door because I didn’t know if it was a robbery attack, until I heard and recognised the voice of one of our neighbours, beckoning on Dr. Isaac to open the door and come out.
“Then I asked my wife to take my son and rush out of the building while I joined other neighbours and we forced his door open, we met him standing in the sitting room while fire was burning in the bedroom.
“He was unhurt; we then held his hands and asked him to follow us. All of a sudden, he pulled away and ran into the burning room. At this point, everyone ran back as the inferno had started escalating and all my belongings got burnt.”
Yakubu added that he lost all his possession to the fire.
The hotel proprietor, Prof. Sylvanus Itodo, expressed shock over the development and wondered why the deceased chose to take his life.
He said, “We were all sitting together that fateful night (Wednesday night) before he left to watch football match and I also left the hotel premises by 11pm to go and sleep.
“It was around 12am that I received a phone call from one of the boys in the hotel, crying, that my hotel was on fire. Before I could get down here, the flame was everywhere; and it took the efforts of the Federal Fire Service to prevent the inferno from escalating to the surrounding houses.”
Findings indicated that the deceased, who hailed from Ohuhu in Umuahia area of Abia State, had been staying in the apartment for some years.
It was gathered that none of his family members ever visited him since he moved into the hotel.
Another lodger, Promise Okem, said he was able to salvage some belongings before the fire spread to his apartment.
He, however, said, two ladies who just finished their national service were not that lucky, as they could not pick anything from their rooms, save for their night gowns.
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