The usual scorching sun in the Seat of Caliphate, Sokoto shined up when Monshur Musa went for Jumu’at_ an obligatory congregational prayer observed by Muslims every Friday.
Ecstatic and delirious, Musa stayed behind to take pictures with his friends in the Mosque premises. While snapping, one of his friends received a phone call that Benjee, a popular private hostel in Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto(UDUS)where Musa lives, was engulfed in fire.
Musa and his friends treated the call trivially, until they received another call on the same information.This time around, about 2:00 pm, he calmly started walking down to his hostel, which was about half-kilometer away from the mosque. What was giving Musa confidence was: Benjee has over 400 rooms, and it could not have been his compound gutted by the fire.
But, his assumption began to suffer uncertainty when he reached the Faculty of Engineering close to the hostel. Few minutes later, upon arrival at the scene of the fire, Musa’s heart ran out of his chest. It was his compound.
“The whole environment was overwhelmed by smoke to the extent that I could not even breathe again,” said Monshur Musa, a 100-level student of the Biochemistry department. He punctuated, took a moment of silence and breathed in before speaking out the analysis of the image of what his eyes saw when he entered his room.
“When I got to my room, the only thing I could see there was ashes. All my credentials, clothes, food stuff and anything you could think of in a room got burned to ashes.”
Monshur Musa is one among the many students of UDUS who were gravely affected by the terrible fire outbreak at the Benjee Hostel on Friday, 2nd December. No less than 34 rooms were devoured by the fire. All belongings of the student tenants including credentials,clothes, food stuff, gadgets, textbooks among other things were reduced to ashes before the intervention of the fire service to extinguish the fire.
Though the actual cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained, while speaking with one of the eye witnesses, Isiaq Ibrahim, a 200-level student of Primary Education and resident of Benjee said the terrible fire outbreak was caused by an electric spark.
“A student was cooking with a hot plate and left for Juma’at prayer without switching it off, and there was an electric spark from the connection of the hot plate.”
Many of the student occupants were displaced by the sad fire outrage.
“On that Friday, one of my friends accommodated me but unfortunately his brother resumed that night. I had to move and stay with one of my brothers in the town,” Monshur Musa lamented.
Laughter Amidst Misery: The Tale of Moshood Abdulbasit
When Mashood Abdulbasit, a 200-level student of Veterinary Medicine was returning from Juma’at prayer, a glint of smoke welcomed him at the Faculty of Engineering. Like Monshur Musa, Abdulbasit was unalarmed, thinking something else could be drowning in the fire, not the hostel in particular.
However, his thought proved wrong, having arrived to see his compound drenching on blazing fire. He rushed to pick up some things, but he realized that the fire had already extended to his room.
“When I saw how the fire was ravaging our room, I broke down in tears,” Abdulbasit remembered.”After I found out that my phone, my roommate’s laptop, original certificates and everything inside the room was destroyed, I was so confused to the extent that I started laughing. Because I was in total disbelief that everything I have in school except the clothes I was wearing got burned.”
Abdulbasit has been fighting to chase away the image of the incident, but the harder he tries, the more the picture keeps magnifying on his mind.
A Test of Faith
Tijani Abdulfattah, a 100-level student of Pharmacy, acknowledged the incident as a test of faith by his God. He was not deeply crestfallen, because whatever happened to him he believed was ordained
“There was no more reaction to it because as a Muslim, I believe whatever Almighty Allah want to happen to his servant it will surely happen and what ever happen to us we believe that is for the better, so there was no surprise.“
“Though I lost a lot of valuable things, the most important was my original certificates,” Abdulbasit lamented.
UDUS Management Keeps Mute
Some of the victims of the fire outbreak were displeased by the reaction of the UDUS management towards the incident.
Moshood Abdulbasit noted that,”what surprised me the most was that I didn’t hear a single word from the school management. Maybe it’s because we are living in a private hostel, but I think we are also students in the university. There is no difference between us and those that are staying in the school hostel.”
Abolarin Ibrahim, another victim of the incident also believed that the reason for the silence of the school management is “our hostel is a privately owned one.”
However, in an speaking with the Chairman of the Caretaker Committee for Students’ Union, Mohammed Shamshudeen Umar told THE NEWS DIGEST PRESS that accommodations were provided for the victims at Bakassi, a school owned hostel.
“We have already provided them with alternatives, by giving them free accommodations at Bakassi and we are still going to do our very best with respect to their welfare.”
Adding that,“we have intimated the University Management with a view to finding a lasting solution and also to prevent future occurrence.”
No Way at Home: A Double Jeopardy for Musa
After Monshur Musa called his father to inform him about the sad incident, the man also broke down, he hung up the call and promised to call back shortly.
“The reason was, my Dad was confused after I told him about the incident. Just in the month of November, he paid N500,000( five hundred thousand naira) for one of my brothers who was concluding a particular programme. So, at the moment he didn’t know what to tell me until later.”
Musa said the thought of the incident has taken a toll on his mental and emotional balance.”It has been affecting me academically. I cannot read again. I cannot sit down alone because any time I do, the thought keeps appearing to me. I cannot concentrate on lectures, any moment I remember about the incident, my heart skips a beat.”
Other Fire Outbreaks In UDUS
In the ongoing 2021/2022 academic session, two other similar occurrences preceded the Benjee incident.
On 15th December 2021, The News Digest Press reported that two rooms in Block J at Aminu Jubril hall of residence were engulfed by fire.
The fire, which was caused by an electrical spark, started from room 13 around 1:30 P.M before extending to room 12. And almost all the credentials and other items such as foodstuff, clothes of the students who reside in room 13 were lost to the fire.
Also, on 7th November 2021, a fire outbreak razed nearly six shops in the Jubril Aminu Hostel Mini-Mart in the main campus.
The fire outbreak was as a result of the waste someone was burning behind the affected shops.