National Telescope national telescope newspaper
Chibuzor Alli
The University of Calaba (UNICAL) Etagbor, in Cross River State, has experienced a multimillion-naira loss of facilities to fire.
The incident was said to have happened on Thursday night, as residents who noticed the burning fire made alarms for rescue.
In a video on social media, a male was heard calling on the fire service for help.
He said, “UNICAL is burning right now; there is a fire outbreak just behind student affairs. We need fire service right now, the school is burning.”
Meanwhile, in an interview with the School VC, Florence B. Obi who spoke to our correspondent on the matter explained that the affected sections by the fire outbreak are the archive and technical departments of the school, where pivotal functions are carried out.
Florence said, “It happened at night, people don’t live here. This is not a residential building. This is a central store. In fact, this section of the store is the furniture, computer and other item section. It is a section that is mostly affected where we have our ACs, computers, and mattresses, and a lot of other things are affected. People are not here, everybody has closed and gone home”.
When asked if the fire service showed up, she said “I would rather choose to talk about my students who saved the day. They are the heroes of this incident than talk about the fire service. The students of the University of Calabar actually saved the day. Despite the inferno, they came in, took risk. Went into the fire, they were using sticks, and stones, they were using everything available to them. They were rushing to go fetch water in the hostels with soaps just to see that they save their university. Really the students are my hero. Now the issue of fire service, we don’t have in the state. I went to the state fire service, and the trucks were down, I went to the federal fire service, and they told me their trucks were down. I went to NPA, they said they were discharging and their law is that anytime they were discharging, they would not be able to move their trucks in case they have any incident. I had to get to the airport, called the Air force commander who reached the airport manager, and FAAN told us their truck was down. In fact, I had to talk to them that are you saying if there is a plane crash now and it is on fire, you will allow all passengers to be grounded? And they said they don’t have any truck. And they said they don’t have any truck that that was what happened. I had no choice but to go to EPZ. And for two hours, I was at EPZ and eventually they came. But by the time EPZ people will come, almost three hours had gone and the student have been able to control the fire and almost put off the fire 85 per cent. Even the other percentage left, when they came, their truck, they said they had a low pumping, they couldn’t really pump. So all that happened was that the students still went back to their hostels, brought all the bucket and then they were fetching water from the truck. Eventually, when the fire service truck got here, the students did the work, so I give kudos to the students. They actually showed ownership, that they are major stakeholder of the university. And am not surprise because I have always told them, that without them there is not university and they have shown that and I will always love them. And I really thank and appreciate them.
