Goods estimated to be worth billions of naira have been consumed by a midnight fire which razed several blocks of shops at Sabon-Gari Market, Kano, a report from the area said.

A Daily Trust report said the inferno started at about 10pm yesterday. It quoted Mallam Garba Abdullahi, one of the traders whose shops were razed, as saying that the fire is suspected to have started from a shop used for commercial charging point by mobile phone users.

“We are suspecting that the fire started from a commercial GSM phones charging joint,” he said.

The report said that due to poor electricity supply, many mobile phone users in Nigeria often resort to recharge their batteries with vendors who use power ‎generators and charge money in return.

•Photo courtesy of Daily Trust shows parts of the razed Sabon-Gari Market, Kano.