Sections of the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) headquarters located in the Yaba area of Lagos was yesterday gutted by fire.
An eyewitness who sells tyres nearby simply identified himself as Nurudeen said, “I was just opening my shop when it started. It is one of the offices at the top storey of the building that the fire started from and then extended to the immediate floors beneath the building.”
However, the West African Examinations Council has reacted to the fire outbreak.
The examination body through a statement by the Acting Head of the Public Affairs Unit, Moyosola Adesina, said the fire was successfully put out by timely intervention of a combined team of fire-fighters.
She added that nobody was hurt as everyone in the building was evacuated by fire fighters.
Adeshina added that all important records were intact and not affected by the fire.
“The fire outbreak was noticed at the headquarters this morning and the fire fighters were quickly invited. Everyone in the building was successfully evacuated and the fire has been put out. Thankfully, no life was lost and all important documents and records are intact,” she said.
However, the public relations manager said she could not ascertain the cause of the incident yet but efforts were on to unravel that as of the time of filing this report.
There were visuals of flames at the WAEC headquarters on social media, early yesterday morning.
There was an unconfirmed report that members of staff were trapped in the building which has several floors.
It was gathered that some of the workers, particularly the non-academic staff union members had resumed when the fire incident was observed.
The fire incident is coming at a time WAEC last week celebrated a major feat by launching a platform for digital certificates where students and their wards can access and retrieve the results of the examination as well as obtain a digital version of certificate.
