The private residence of the Minister of State of the FCT, Dr Mariya Mahmoud, located at Asokoro, was on Sunday gutted by fire.

The Acting Director of the FCT Fire Service, Amiola Adebayo, confirmed the incident to our correspondent.

Adebayo stated that the first floor of the building was completely razed by the fire.

He explained that the fire had started at about 9:45 am, but said officers of the Service arrived at the scene some minutes after they had received a running call after responders had tried to reach the Federal Fire Service.

A running call means that rather than calling the Emergency line of the Fire Service, responders had insisted on going to the office to get the attention of the firemen.

“The fire was discovered a few minutes to ten, maybe around 9:45 am. We received a running call around thirteen minutes after ten, so we followed the person who came to call us to the fire scene.

“All of them were on the ground floor. They did not discover the fire on time, and they didn’t call the Fire Service. It was a running call that came to us. From our findings, they say they called the Federal Fire Service, but they didn’t respond on time, that’s when the running call came to our office.

“On reaching there, we saw that the first floor, the upper floor was completely engulfed in fire. So what we could do is just to prevent the fire from spreading to the ground floor, and the adjacent structures. No lives lost”, he said.

The cause of the fire outbreak is yet to be determined, although the media assistant to the minister, Austin Elemue, also confirmed the incident.