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Fire at the weekend, destroyed the Magistrate Court 1 located inside the Ebonyi State Judiciary Headquarters Abakaliki.
It was learned that the Magistrate Court 1 was completely destroyed by the fire alongside exhibits and other vital documents in the building.
The building is attached to the Magistrate Court Registrar’s office
Properties of law offenders confiscated by the court which were parked inside the court, were also burnt by the fire.
A Magistrate who spoke anonymously told our reporter that he and some staff of the state high court who are living around the Magistrate Court premises, were woken up from sleep by the fire.
“We were woken up by the inferno. We are living close to the court premises. We came there, we started using our fire extinguishers to quench the fire. I shot one of the extinguishers and the fire exploded and got more serious.
“By this time, our security men had ran away. We contacted the state fire service and they came and helped us to quench the fire. Before their arrival, we had exhausted our fire extinguishers,” he stated.
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Nnenna Onuoha, Chief Registrar of the state high court who confirmed the incident, said the estimate of what was destroyed by the fire is about N40million.
“On the early hours of June and that should be on 3rd June, we got calls from our people living at the magistrate quarters that our court has been gutted by fire.
“We rushed to the court and saw that the court was truly razed by fire we started asking what could be the cause of the incident. They told us that the fire was from the transformer, they said the fire came out from transformer.
“Rescuers called Ebonyi State Fire Service and they came and helped us to quench the fire. As you can see, the building was completely gutted by fire.
“Rough estimate of the property should be up to about N40million. Most of exhibits in the court were gutted by fire,” she said.
