Supreme Court spokesman Festus Akande on Monday morning said the fire in the high court will not affect the election petition filed by Peter Obi from the Labor Party and Atiku Abubakar from the PDP, among others.
Akande said this in an interview with newsmen to answer some Nigerians who fear that the fire will spoil the petition process.
“In fact, it has nothing to do with it and it won’t affect anything in court.
“It happened in the room and the room has a computer, other equipment and a library that is used by the justice who lives in that room, so books, stationery and computers in the ward are affected.”
He also said that according to the investigation, the fire was caused by an electrical fault and not an attack on the shelter.
“Contrary to reports on social media, the high court is not under attack from bosses or malicious attacks. It is just the result of a failure of power.
“This is the preliminary investigation until now. Investigations are still ongoing. We cannot say exactly what caused the fire. As we found out this morning, it was an electrical fault.
“The High Court is well equipped with fire fighting equipment and when it happened the officers arrived and were able to deploy all the firefighters on all the floors of the court and put out the fire. even before getting help from the fire service outside the high court.
“Because it was not a serious problem, there was no need to evacuate everyone and because the staff were able to immediately act and put out the fire, it was not possible to reach other rooms.
Also, Akande said that the court lacks sprinklers, adding that if the age of the building is long, they usually build and modify devices to help in such times.
“When you talk about fire extinguishers, it’s a very old building, so we try to create and build equipment that can help, so they can use the extinguishers effectively.
According to him, the fire broke out between 7:30 a.m. and 8 a.m. and was extinguished after an hour.
