NEMA confirms 1 death in UNILAG guest house fire

One person has been confirmed dead in a fire outbreak that gutted a section of the University of Lagos Guest House in the early hours of Thursday in Lagos.

The victim, said to be a guest who came for the ongoing 2014/2015 convocation of the institution, was said to have died of suffocation.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) gathered that the fire started around 2.00 a.m.

The victim, who accompanied a prominent traditional ruler to the convocation, was said to be lodging in room A12, where he suffocated to death due to impact of the fire.

The spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Mr Ibrahim Farinloye, confirmed the incident in a text message sent to the NAN.

Farinloye quoted the Zonal Coordinator of NEMA for Lagos, Ogun and Oyo states, Alhaji Suleiman Yakubu, as saying that four rooms – A12, A13, A14 and A15 – were affected by the fire.

“The deceased will be flown to Maiduguri for burial today,’’ the text message read in part.

Effort to speak with officials of the university, about the incident yielded no result as everyone claimed to be busy with the convocation events and could not talk to the press.

NAN reports that the three-day activities for the 2014/2015 convocation end on Thursday.