By Felix Khanoba
The headquarters of the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) in Abuja was on Wednesday engulfed in fire just a few days after a similar incident wreaked havoc on the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (Treasury House).
The inferno engulfed the seven-storey CAC’s headquarters, located in the highbrow Maitama area of the Federal Capital City in the morning and inflicted some damages on part of the gigantic building before the fire was finally put off.
Personnel of the Commission, who were said to be around when the fire gutted the building, escaped unhurt, even as speculations were rife over the possible loss of vital financial records to the incident.
Registrar General of the Commission, Mr Garba Abubakar, however, dismissed such claims, saying only one unit of 2hp Split Air conditioner and the electric cabling leading to it were affected.
His words: “At about 10.20 hours today one of the outer units of the split Air Conditioners on the 6th floor in the Main Building exploded due to power surge.
The sound attracted the attention of the few personnel within the premises and they immediately mobilized to quench the fire using fire extinguishers and fire hose reels within the building. The fire had descended through the outer AC ducts to the 5th and 4th floors which necessitated a call to FCT Fire Service and they promptly responded.
“The fire has since been contained. Only one unit of 2hp Split Air conditioner and the electric cabling leading to it were affected. There was no casualty arising from the incident. Furthermore, the Commission’s Main building and all records and other vital information have not been affected by the incident.”
The AUTHORITY reports that the fire incident in the Commission comes on the heels of the recent outage of its Company Registration Portal (CRP) which affected registration of business names and other related activities.
“CAC wishes to inform its esteemed customers and the general public that normal service has resumed on the Company Registration Portal (CRP). Please accept our sincerest apologies for any issues created by the outage and please reach out to our help desk if you have questions and concerns,” the Commission had said on its tweeter’s handle on 28 March, 2020.
