The fire affected the office of the Director of Voter Registry at the Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) Commission.
According to the Director of Public Affairs of INEC Emmanuel Umenger, who briefed newsmen in Abuja on the incident, the fire began and ended at the affected office.
He, however, allayed any fear, saying that “there should be no cause for worry because the fire did not affect the data base containing information about the voter registration.”
According to information pieced together by Nigerian Tribune the fire reportedly started at about 9.30 a.m. when most of the staff were already on duty.
It was also gathered that the fire was brought under control by combined effort of seven fire fighting trucks, including four trucks from the Federal Fire Service, two from the FCT fire service and one from the Nigerian Air Force.
Mr Umenger, while briefing newsmen said,“as you have seen, the fire incident began and only ended in the office of the Director of Voter Registry. Due to the prompt effort of staff on the ground who alerted the relevant agencies, the fire was put out before it could spread to other places and luckily, the voter registration data base was not affected and the saver was saved because the fire did not even get to that section of the building.”
He added that “the Commission is poised as ever to grant Nigerians credible, free and fair elections at all times and this little incident will not in any way stop that, I must assure you.”
The Director of ICT, Engineer Chidi Nwafor who had earlier conducted the newsmen round the affected office said all that was lost were personal effects of the staff, some files and computers.
Nigerian Tribune recalled that in April, 2011 the security post of the commission was gutted by fire; on May 24, 2011 the waiting room of the office of the chairman of the commission also recorded fire incident and at another time last year the Electoral Institute of the commission suffered similar fate.
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