Fire on Saturday gutted the private residence of the Minister of State for the Federal Capital Territory, Mariya Mahmoud, according to a report by The PUNCH.

The FCT Fire Service confirmed the incident, adding that the first floor of the building was razed in the fire but no life was lost.  

The Media Aide to Ms Mahmoud, Austin Elemue, also confirmed the incident.

Acting director of the FCT Fire Service, Amiola Aebayo, said their station received a running call after efforts to reach the Federal Fire Service had failed. 

The cause of the fire was unknown. 

“A running call means that rather than calling the Emergency line of the Fire Service, responders had insisted on going to the office to get the attention of the firemen. The fire was discovered a few minutes to 10am, maybe around 9:45 am. We received a running call around 13 minutes after 10am, so we followed the person who came to call us to the fire scene.

“All of them were on the ground floor. They did not discover the fire on time, and they didn’t call the Fire Service. It was a running call that came to us. From our findings, they say they called the Federal Fire Service, but they didn’t respond on time, that’s when the running call came to our office. On reaching there, we saw that the first floor, the upper floor was completely engulfed in fire. So what we could do is just to prevent the fire from spreading to the ground floor, and the adjacent structures. No life lost,” Mr Amiola said.