THE three children of Mr Tunde and Mrs Christianah Emmanuel, Glory, 13, Samuel, eight, and Darasimi, three, died in a fire incident at their residence, situated at Last Bus Stop, behind Ibadan Grammar School, Ibadan, early Friday. The fire, it was gathered, started around 1.00 a.m.
The couple, according to sources, were not around and the three children were locked inside the bedroom of an eight-room face-to-face building.
Saturday Tribune gathered that although nobody could ascertain the cause of the fire, it was the night guards in the vicinity were the ones who called attention to it.
The fire affected the room-and-parlour apartment occupied by the Emmanuel family more than it did the other parts of the building.
The eldest of the children, Glory, it was gathered, struggled to force the door open but for the padlock on the door and the continuous raging of the fire. Her brothers perished with her.
Everything in the bedroom where the children died was also burnt completely. The remains of the children were taken away by men from Sanyo Divisional Police Station, Ibadan.
According to sources, some young men occupying the room opposite the sitting room of the Emmanuels had gone clubbing when the fire broke out.
This alerted other occupants of the building and neighbours but they were helpless because the deceased’s dad, who sources informed had gone to pass the night in an unknown place, had locked the children inside the room, while his wife was on night duty at her place of work.
Efforts to rescue the trapped children proved abortive.
In an interview with a neighbour of the family who identified herself simply as Adeola, she disclosed that the three children struggled till death.
Adeola, whose room was also burnt completely, said: “We were sleeping when the night guards called our attention to the fire from outside around 1.00 a.m.
“Shocked and afraid, we ran for safety only to realise that the children of Mr Emmanuel were locked inside their room. People made efforts to rescue them and tried to put out the fire with water but this wasn’t enough as the fire kept ranging. Glory attempted to escape and possibly rescue his siblings but the door was locked from outside with a big padlock.
“Neighbours attempted to rescue them but they were kept away by the force of the fire and things turned really ugly. The water we were using seemed to be aggravating the fire.
Firefighters had a hard time getting here because most of the gates leading to this area were locked. So, it was difficult for them to get here in time. They eventually put out the fire.”
Adeola also informed Saturday Tribune that the parents were not around during the tragedy.
It was gathered from other sources that Emmanuel, a grassroots politician and an electrician also known as Baba Ara, actually passed the night with someone suspected to be his girlfriend, possibly within the same vicinity.
It was gathered that when he got wind of the incident, he came around to ascertain the extent of damage, but left upon hearing that all his children were dead.
Another resident who pleaded for anonymity told our correspondent that Baba Ara “actually spent the night with his lover.”
He added: “As you can see, it is an open secret and it is on the lips of everybody in the area. He locked the children inside the room and spent the night with his girlfriend.”
Other residents said that when Emmanuel came to the realisation of the calamity, he ran away from the scene shouting ‘my three children died’ but was arrested by vigilance members.
He was said to have convinced the vigilance members that he was not a thief, placing a call through to one of the clerics in his church to confirm his identity. The call, it was gathered, saved him from being detained.
When contacted, the spokesman of the Oyo State police command, Gbenga Fadeyi , a Superintendent of Police, confirmed the development.
He said the the police had begun investigations to know the cause of the fire.
