No critical document lost to fire incident, says INEC

The Independent National Electoral Commission has allayed fears of destruction of official records by the fire that gutted its headquarters on Friday.

The fire which started few minutes before noon razed the commission’s newly-furnished Media Centre.

INEC spokesman Festus Okoye told journalists at the scene of the incident that critical documents relating to the commission’s activities with the political parties were not affected.

Okoye said the damage done was minimal and the only documents that were lost were just correspondences, constitution and manifestos and files relating to political parties.

“Some of our critical staff are in the office and noticed that fire had started from the office of the Director of Election and Party Monitoring,” Okoye said.

“They rushed off and alerted the fire service but our own internal firemen had responded before the arrival of the Federal Fire Service and they were able to put off the fire.

“It started around 11am or 11.30am and you could see that it did not get to the main building of the headquarters.

“It is intact. We lost some of our photocopiers and computers and documents relating to political party activities but they are mostly correspondences and constitution and manifestos and files relating to political parties. The critical documents relating to our activities with the political parties were not affected because they have been moved out even before the incident. There is no cause for alarm,” he assured.

He said preliminary investigation conducted by the Fire Service Department revealed that the remote cause of the fire outbreak had to with some electrical challenge, adding that there was no cause for alarm.