By Precious Oluwole

Ondo State House of Assembly has mandated the committee set up to investigate the cause of the fire incident at Ondo East Local Government to give its report by 10th of August, 2023.

Hon. Victor Japhet, the Chairman, House Committee on Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs gave this directive during an oversight carried out by the committee to the secretariat on Monday.

It would be recalled that few weeks ago, there was inferno outbreak at the Ondo East Local Government Secretariat and the State Emergency Medical Services Agency (ODEMSA) located in the same Council .

The inferno razed down a whole part of the Secretariat complex, while that of ODEMSA which occured few days earlier with two ambulances and part of the office gutted by fire.

While commiserating with the entire people of the Secretariat,the Chairman of the Committee sought for the Management and Staff cooperation, urging them not to cover up anything but show patriotism to help the investigation and profer solution.

“We need to bring the culprit(s) to book if the incidence in any form, has human involvement, in order to curb future re-occurrence.

“We’ll do our best to unravel the cause of the fire incident, we are not rulling out that anything can happen naturally, but we have to seek for facts” he stressed.

In his response, the Chairman, Ondo East Local Government, Olawale Akinkuotu revealed that a Committee has been put in place and Securities are also working to investigate the cause of the incident.

“Basically, there shouldn’t be any fire outbreak here, because we don’t have electricity in the local government for the past 15 years, so the issue of electrical fault is totally out of it and because of the cost of diesel, we have not power our generator for the past 3 months before the incident so, I foresee hidden masterminded by some unscrupulous element”, Akinkuotu told the Committee.

The Committee also visited the inferno scene at Ondo State Emergency Medical Services Agency (ODEMSA) in the Council Area and said report on the incident should be given to the Committee as well.