The Fire That Exposed Lagos – Abdul Mahmud

By Abdul Mahmud

Late on Tuesday 16th September 2025, I came online to a scene that should never happen in a modern city. Live videos filled my phone screen. Afriland Towers, the seven-storey high-rise on Broad Street, Lagos, which houses one of the branches of the United Bank for Africa (UBA) and the local offices of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) became the site of desperate Nigerians leaping from raging inferno into foamy materials spread by volunteer responders on the ground below. The leaps weren’t for thrill. They weren’t some kind of fire drill. The spot were those who leapt landed wasn’t an assembly point. They weren’t leaping for spectacle. They leapt for survival as flames raged everywhere and smoke closed in. The choice was fire by breath or death by leaping. Though initial official reports insisted there were no deaths among those who leapt from the burning tower. Reports by some Nigerians on social media exposed the lie. A Sunday David-Jatto, an Assistant Director of the FIRS, didn’t survive the leap from the sixth floor. There were fatalities right inside the burning building; only that the figures were hidden. The public authorities in Lagos and the management of United Bank for Africa chose a strange silence, hedging their words, refusing clarity on the number of casualties. But, the FIRS has since announced that it lost four of its staff. When institutions dance around disclosure, it is rarely out of compassion for the dead but out of fear for the living and fear of public outrage, of litigation, of reputational ruin. In Lagos, where tragedy is often managed as public relations, statistics become negotiable. Numbers are suppressed, delayed, or denied outright, as if the absence of confirmation could erase the presence of grief.

Back to the viral videos. I could not believe what I was watching. It was not a Batman movie. It was Lagos. Human beings in the country’s largest city, forced by instinct to survive a raging inferno, recreate deadly stunts taken out of a fictional movie. This time, the recreation was not for entertainment as Michael Keaton did in Tim Burton’s 1989 original classic, Batman. The images have refused to leave me. The terrified faces at the windows and balconies. The desperate leaps into foamy materials below. The desperate crowd of responders below is intent on saving lives. People screaming. People praying. People filming. How can a city of more than 20 million souls not have working firefighting cranes and lifts? How does a commercial capital, one that boasts of wealth, towers, and bridges, leave its people to choose between burning and leaping? How do we explain that in 2025, Nigerians are still forced to escape fires like this? This is not the first time. Three years ago, the Ebeano Supermarket in Abuja was consumed by flames. I remember watching the videos, head shaking in disbelief, as frantic shoppers and staff ran helter-skelter with buckets in search of water. Last Tuesday, as I watched the Afriland Towers burn, I found myself shaking my head in the same weary way. My words at the time remain true today: “A modern city without fire hydrants, without dry hydrants, with public sinkholes that serve no purpose, with rickety fire trucks, yet someone would boast we have a country”.

The Afriland Towers inferno exposes the boast of the “giant of Africa” and the boasts of its cities that often describe themselves as mega and modern. But when fire comes, all the boasting burns away. What is left is naked unpreparedness. I have been screaming about this for years. The need to modernise our state. The need to build systems that save lives. The need to drag our country and its cities into the present. But last Tuesday, reality smacked us in the face again. We saw it at the Ikoyi building collapse in 2021. For four hours after that tragedy, there was no organised rescue team. None. People dug into rubble with their bare hands. They tried to save brothers, sisters, neighbours, strangers. But the state was absent. It was Tinubu’s Eko; and it is still Tinubu’s Eko. Èkó ò ní bàjé! – Lagos will not spoil! That was then. This is now. Nothing has changed. A high-rise caught fire, and instead of the fireman’s lifts and firefighting cranes, Lagos offered absence, while the people were everywhere with loamy materials, camera phones, prayers and more prayers, and the statistics of the dead: people who went to work in the morning and never returned; and to those who returned clinging to their broken lives. Just. Women who waved goodbye to their families and ended their day on the pavement. Husbands who called their wives one last time from smoke-filled rooms, never sure if it was better to be smoked out by the raging flames or leap into death on the pavement. These are Nigerians. Our own flesh and blood. They deserved more than the leap of faith into imminent death.

We can build towers but not safety nets. We can pave expressways but not equip fire brigades. We can commission flyovers with fanfare but cannot provide basic hydrants that save lives. This is the contradiction of Lagos. It shines on the outside. It crumbles on the inside. When Lagos burns, Nigeria burns. When Lagos fails, Nigeria fails. Lagos is our mirror. It shows us who we are as a country. The Afriland Towers fire is not an accident of fate. It is the logical result of neglect and corruption – typical of our unseriousness.

We call Lagos a modern city. But what is modern about a city without fire hydrants? What is modern about rickety fire trucks and fire kekes (like the ones commissioned in Badagry a few years ago) that cannot reach the top floors of the very buildings they issue permits for? What’s really modern about our Lagos? The renowned British sociologist, Professor Anthony Giddens, helps us name the lie. Giddens described modernity as a “runaway world”, the condition where societies confront risks produced by their very development, but respond with reflexivity: systems, technologies, and institutions that anticipate and manage disaster. In late modernity, cities build fire infrastructures that prevent tragedy. In high modernity, risk management is built into the fabric of daily life: fire brigades that arrive in minutes, firefighting cranes that reach the skies, emergency numbers that ring and are answered. But, Lagos stands outside this trajectory where other mega cities long entered late modernity. Some cities are already progressing toward high modernity. But, Lagos, by contrast, clings to improvisation where others respond to manufactured risks with foresight. Lagos responds with citizens’ prayers and camera phones while others are embedding reflexivity into their institutions. Modernity is not about billboards, or about “Èkó ò ní bàjé”. It is not about skyscrapers. It is about systems that work when they are needed. Fire brigades that arrive in minutes. Ambulances that function. Emergency numbers that ring and are answered.

We are always condemned to repeating our tragedies. Each time, our rulers will promise reforms. Each time, we will bury our dead. Each time we will carry those with broken homes to traditional bone setting and healing homes. Truth be told, our orthopaedic hospitals don’t function. Each time, nothing changes. This cycle is cruel. It is predictable. It is unacceptable. But, where is the state in all this? Where is the government that collects taxes, levies, fees, and permits? Where is the government that fines hawkers and bans okada but cannot keep a single working fire hydrant? The Nigerian state is present when it comes to punishment. It is absent when it comes to protection. It comes with police vans when youths gather at rallies. It does not come with fire trucks when citizens are trapped in smoke-filled buildings. Yesterday, Ebeano burned. Ikoyi collapsed. Afriland Towers burned. Tomorrow, another building will collapse or burn. Tomorrow, another set of Nigerians will leap from high-rise buildings. And tomorrow, there will be many who bring out foamy materials for our new set of Batmen. Many will raise their prayers to higher decibels.

Lagos is a paradox. It calls itself a megacity. But, its megacity status “na only for mouth” to couch it in the pidgin lingo of the street. A megacity must be liveable. A megacity must be safe. A megacity must protect its people. Lagos does none of these. It is a city of wealth and poverty side by side. A city of towers without safety nets. A city of ambition without preparation. A city that builds high-rise but cannot save lives on high. Lagos must enter modernity. Our country must enter modernity. That means more than speeches. It means building institutions that save lives. It means planning cities with fire hydrants at every corner. It means equipping fire brigades with ladders that reach the skies. It means training first responders who know what to do. Modernity is about systems that function in crisis. It is about governments that do not abandon their citizens at the edge of death. We cannot claim modernity while people leap from windows to escape fire. We cannot claim modernity while people dig rubble with their bare hands. We cannot claim modernity while fire trucks break down on the way to disasters.

Those who leapt from the Afriland Towers are our compatriots. Those who died are the natives of our person. They remind us what neglect costs. They show us the real face of our unmodernity. They force us to confront the truth: we are not ready for the city we pretend to be. The question is whether we will and n. Or whether we will move on as if nothing happened. Whether the images of people leaping will haunt us into change. Or whether we will scroll past them by tomorrow. Lagos is not just a city. It is a warning. What happened at Afriland Towers could happen tomorrow in Abuja, Port Harcourt, Kano. It could happen anywhere. The choice before us is simple. Enter modernity or remain in the cycle of preventable tragedy. Build systems that save lives or keep digging with bare hands.

Last Tuesday Lagos failed its people. Again. And until Lagos and our country choose to enter modernity, the next tragedy is only a matter of time. James Baldwin aptly described that next tragedy as The Fire Next Time.