Fire burnt down part of the administration block at Maseno University on Wednesday October 7th night after unknown arsonists attacked the institution.
The fire which begun at around midnight burnt part of the administration block which houses the central registry, central store, finance, office of the deputy vice chancellor in charge of partnership research and innovations, office of the director students welfare and office of the deputy vice chancellor in charge of administration.
According to the director of public relations in Maseno University Jasper Otieno the fire which broke out at around midnight, the security guards reported they saw some students hurl some objects in those offices before they caught fire though it is yet to be confirmed.
Otieno further added that the staff information and student finance information were lost in the fire though no student academic information was lost as they are stored in the academics wing and not those offices. He added that the student financial information lost would be recovered through the ICT department.
“The university will not close due to this incident and we have advised all students to go to class and normal lectures to continue as scheduled.” he said
There were no casualties reported as the building was unoccupied during the attack. Fire fighters who came in from Kisumu were unable to contain the fire and nothing was recovered in the building. Mr. Nicholas Njiri the Police Boss from Kisumu said the inferno stated at around 2am in the night and they haven’t established the cause of the fire and investigations on getting to the root course of the same are ongoing.
“We responded immediately when we were contacted and we helped the fire fighting team from Kisumu to contain the fire.” Njiri Said.
Felix Omondi one of the students said no students were involved in the incident since most of them were in their Hostels.
“When we came out we realized that the building was on fire and some of the students helped in putting off the fire and no one should claim students were involved.” He said.
Though some sources claim the fire could have been started by some students who were barred from vying for the universities students’ leadership positions by the administration.
‘‘Its election time and when the candidates list was released some names were not included, I think this may have triggered some students in doing so.’’ A student said.
