The fire that ravaged the ritzy Afriland Towers on the boisterous Broad Street, Lagos Island, on Tuesday, September 16, 2025, is another poignant reminder of our insouciant attitude to safety, maintenance and regulatory standards in this country.
By the time the kerfuffle that greeted the tragedy simmered down, 10 vibrant Nigerians, between the ages of 21 and 58, had been forced to answer the last dreaded call, tall aspirations abruptly perishing with many of them and an impossible-to-fill emotional gash burrowed into the hearts of their loved ones!
Fire and building collapse disasters have claimed too many lives in this country. The trend is almost becoming an epidemic. And most of these tragedies are clearly avoidable.
Between January and June, this year alone, for instance, the Lagos State Fire and Rescue Services (LSFRS) recorded 63 deaths and rescued 252 persons from 1,072 incidents. The breakdown of the data showed there were 922 fire calls, two minor explosions and 10 building collapses.
The LSFRS spokesman, Maria Fadairo, said eight of the 10 building collapse incidents were partial, that there were 73 rescue operations and 65 salvage incidents. But 315 of the emergency calls were false alarms.
The Director of LSFRS, Mrs Margaret Adeseye, added that property worth N117.12 billion was saved by the agency from fire in 2024, while the estimated property lost was N19.52 billion.
Adeseye said 450 victims were rescued alive, while 91 were rescued dead. In 2023, 2,573 fire incidents were recorded, but there was a sharp drop of 1,952 in 2024.
Records also showed that there were 62 building collapse cases nationwide in 2022, 52 in 2023 and 47 in 2024. Lagos State consistently leads in building collapses, accounting for 40% in 2020, 32% in 2022, and 33% in 2023.
The Building Collapse Prevention Guild, in a comprehensive compilation of building collapse incidents in the country, said recently that the nation witnessed 1,616 deaths in 653 reported incidents of building collapse between October, 1974 and May 25, 2025.
According to the Guild, Lagos State accounts for the highest number of recorded building collapse incidents in Nigeria, making up 55.28 per cent of the total.
The report added: “Following Lagos, the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja ranks second with 4.29 per cent, while Anambra State is third with 4.13 per cent. Oyo State follows closely in the fourth place at 3.37 per cent, and Kano State rounds off the top five with 3.22 per cent…”
These incidents are often attributed to factors such as poor maintenance, lack of mechanical smoke extraction systems, insufficient concrete strength, improper construction methods and inadequate structural design.
The Afriland Towers inferno was horrendous in proportion and tempestuous in emotional outbursts. The pain, anguish and sorrow were unnerving and penetrating.
The tragedy has revved up growing concerns over safety standards in the nation’s high-density cities, especially Lagos and Abuja, with a high concentration of high rises, where incidents of electrical faults, generator malfunctions, and inverter-related accidents have become recurring risks.
The fire was believed to have started in the building’s basement, linked to inverter batteries. Thick black smoke spread momentarily through the building’s HVAC system and fire escape routes, incapacitating those on the upper floors.
Those who died met their end primarily from smoke inhalation caused by a basement fire originating from inverter batteries.
As noted earlier, the tendon that binds the Afriland Towers fire and other tragedies is the general slipshod attention often paid to the enforcement of safety, maintenance and regulatory standards.
Our non-challance to maintenance, especially, is at the heart of the gradual deterioration of many otherwise exotic public buildings and monuments. Overtime, such architectural masterpieces, often commissioned with fanfare, would start regressing and the facilities malfunctioning.
Back to Afriland Towers fire, the public relations(PR) stunts mounted by Afriland Properties giving the impression that the company’s safety standards were in order fly in the face of safety experts’ opinions and overwhelming eyewitness accounts suggesting otherwise.
Indeed, the casualty figure would have been more but for the timely intervention of first responders, who were traders and residents, who saw palls of unusual thick, black smoke belching out from the towering Afriland building, because the occupants were actually hemmed in.
According to Adeyinka Adebiyi, a retired Director of Public Safety and Wellbeing at the Lagos State Safety Commission, panic and poor building design worsened the Afriland Towers tragedy.
He said: “The security glasses used for the windows in the building cannot be manually opened and are not breakable. Hence, the smoke was intense and could not escape. Although there were exits, the smoke had covered them and people could not locate the exit routes.”
The Permanent Secretary of Urban Development at the Lagos State Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development, Gbolahan Owofunmi-Oki, also faulted the Afriland building’s sealed glass design. He said the absence of ventilation was directly responsible for the deaths.
“Even in the event of emergency, the windows were sealed and there was no ventilation. The windows should have openings. When you use that kind of windows in an advanced world, there is always an opening on the windows that they can open. But in our case, we fill everything up”.
As a result of the sealed and difficult-to-break glass windows, the engulfing smoke became bottled up, trapping the hapless occupants. They started groping around in the smoke-induced darkness desperately searching for a way of escape. Many of them, gripped by an uprush of fear and panic, resorted to all kinds of gnarly options, including jumping down.
Many of the survivors actually escaped through this option. They were assisted to jump to safety by traders and residents, using ropes, ladders, and even bare hands. Without them,the death toll would probably have doubled.
Eyewitnesses, who were part of the first responders, said there were systemic failures in the building, which made escape and rescue difficult. First was the faulty emergency alarm and exit problem.
Afriland Properties claimed that the emergency alarm was intact and was even activated when the fire started, but it added that some people claimed they heard the alarm, while others said they did not hear.
This appears specious. How would people not hear a piercing sound like an alarm? Is it possible for the hubbub of the fire to have completely muffled the alarm? First responders actually heard the Afriland security men shouting ‘Fire! Fire! Fire!’ because the alarm could not be activated.
A responder, who is also a regular visitor to Afriland Towers, also squealed that the emergency exit had an issue. She recalled how a staircase that once served as an escape route during an earlier emergency was blocked during renovation works.
“During the renovation, the step at the side of the building was blocked. The last time there was a fire incident here, they rang the alarm and everyone escaped through the step. When they blocked it, I wondered how people would get out next time there is an emergency. Now, we have seen the result. Why would the safe passage in a high-rise building be blocked?”
One of the first responders to the scene also revealed that the inverter had shown repeated signs of fault.
“This last Sunday, the inverter exploded, and the same thing happened last month. They knew it was faulty, but they kept repairing it instead of changing it completely. If they had replaced the entire system, this would never have happened,” he reasoned.
The company’s claim that the building is fitted with mechanical smoke extractors and fire reels reads like a porky. If those safety safeguards were truly triggered, why was the smoke not effectively mitigated before the situation resulted in grisly consequences?
The decision of the Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, to probe the Afriland Towers tragedy is applaudable, as it will unearth possible inadequacies and hidden facts that will be valuable in addressing tragedies of this nature and prevent reoccurrences.
However, while awaiting the report of the probe, which we admonish should be made public, we believe the situation is a wake-up call for everyone concerned —structural/building experts as well as industry’s regulators to be heedful of safety, regulatory and maintenance standards.
First, let there be stricter enforcement of building safety codes, particularly for older high rises in our major cities. Under-hand compromises or sleaze are often cited as underscoring the haphazard enforcement of regulatory standards in the building industry and other facets of our national life.
Integrity should, therefore, rank as high as expertise and experience in the criteria considered for appointing our industry regulators.
Second, all those high rises should be subjected to constant integrity tests for their structural fitness and state of preparedness or otherwise for safety in emergencies. There should be no compromise in ensuring that they are equipped with up-to-date and workable safety gadgets and safeguards.
Safety experts recommend that every workplace located in high rises should operate a Safety Management System in line with ISO Safety and Health 45001-2018 standards. Workers in those places should also undergo continuous fire drills and safety training to be sufficiently schooled on how to cope successfully with emergencies.
Third, the Lagos perm sec, Owodunmi-Oju, said the state would start enforcing regulations requiring high-rise buildings to incorporate ventilated windows, saying “cutting walls must have windows for ventilation as is done in advanced countries; so it will be enforced.”
This is a welcome development that should be replicated nationwide. High-rise structures dotting our major cities should be made to replace sealed windows with ventilated options to avoid a repeat of the Afriland Towers tragic experience.
Recurring carnage through avoidable fire and building collapse disasters should be drastically curtailed, if not totally eradicated.
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