No records lost in Accountant-General’s office fire —Minister

The Minister of State for Finance, Budget and National Planning, Clem Agba, has said no official records were lost in Wednesday’s inferno which razed the office of the Accountant-General of the Federation.

Agba also told journalists the fire at the building known as the Treasury House was caused by an electrical spark from one of the Air Conditioners on the 4th floor of the building.

The minister said the only unit affected in the fire incident is the unit where capital releases are made to the Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs).

He added that the fire was successfully put out by 25 fire trucks within 35 minutes.

Agba said:

“We have gone round the rooms and offices where the fire affected, and I am glad to report that our Data Centre where all our records are kept are fully intact. There is no destruction, so we haven’t lost any record.

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“As a government I want to assure you that our records are intact, a few documents are burnt, we haven’t started recovery to check what actually burnt, but all our financial transactions are intact.

“We would be doing full-scale investigation using the right professionals to determine exactly what happened.”

The Accountant General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris, also confirmed that no casualty was recorded in the incident.

However, the AGF did not rule out sabotage in the fire outbreak, saying a thorough investigation would be carried out to ascertain the cause of the incident.

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