BY CHIDI NKWOPARA

OWERRI—Three buildings of Amakohia Secondary School, Ikeduru local government area of Imo State, have been completely burnt by a ravaging bushfire.

Vanguard investigations revealed that the school principal’s house, the technical workshop and the engine room were consumed by the blazing fire.

It was also gathered that the fire was set by local hunters who immediately disappeared when it started wreaking havoc.

Confirming the incident to newsmen, the Principal, Mr. Nath Iwunna, who was obviously shocked by the devastation, said the entire school would have been destroyed by the fire but for the intervention of sympathisers.

The Principal said: “Some sympathizers who trooped to the scene, made spirited efforts to save the buildings but when their efforts did not yield the desired result, they opted to stop the fire from getting to other buildings.”

The school proprietor and Catholic Archbishop of Owerri Ecclesiastical Province, His Grace, Dr. Anthony J. V. Obinna, has expressed shock at the level of destruction and wondered how the Archdiocese would raise the required amount of money to rebuild the burnt buildings.

While appealing for help from good spirited individuals, the Archbishop also said since the handover of schools to the mission, the Archdiocese had been working very hard to restore the schools to their pre-war standards.

“It has not been easy to achieve this and efforts to get the state government to embrace the pre-war grants-in-aid policy have not been successful,” Obinna said.

It would be recalled that this school was one those  seized at the end of the war in 1970 by Ukpabi Asika’s administration in the defunct East Central state.

This school was one of the many returned to their original owners by Ikedi Ohakim’s administration in 2010.