The private residence of Minister of State for FCT, Dr Mariya Mahmoud was on Sunday gutted by fire.
It was learnt that the fire incident at the residence located in the highbrow Asokoro area of Abuja was a major one.
Media Aide to the minister, Mr. Austine Elemue, confirmed the development but declined to give further details.
Also confirming the incident, Acting Director of the FCT Fire Service, Amiola Adebayo, said the first floor of the building was completely razed by the fire.
The fire chief disclosed that the fire occurred at 9:45 am.
“The fire was discovered a few minutes to ten, maybe around 9:45 am. We received a running call around thirteen minutes after ten, 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 lives lost,” Adebayo said.