Lagos has recorded two main hearth incidents within the final week alone. First, it was the Afriland Tower, which caught hearth on September 16, 2025. Just a few hours in a while the identical day, one other inferno broke out at a plaza. The 2 hearth accidents occurred on the Island, the realm of the state infamous for frequent market hearth emergencies.
From Balogun to Oyingbo market, these incidents have turn into a typical incidence. Each hearth incident usually leaves an enduring reminiscence of sorrow, tears, and monetary losses for enterprise homeowners, having a broader unfavourable impression on the nation’s struggling financial system.
Regardless of the large losses, victims are sometimes left helpless because of a mixture of things, together with an absence of a government-backed compensation framework to alleviate the ache of fireplace outbreaks.
ALSO READ: 7 urgent actions to take if there is fire outbreak
Whereas compensation packages could present some reduction to fireside victims, there’s a must make clear the basis causes of this menace in Nigeria’s industrial capital to discover a preventive resolution, which prompts the essential query: why do Lagos markets proceed to catch hearth?
Why do Lagos markets preserve burning?
1. Overcrowded and poorly constructed buildings
Most Lagos markets are constructed like a maze, and at the same time as a Lagosian going for market runs appears like an final search and once you’re completed strolling in circles many occasions, you are feeling so exhausted due to how the stalls, retailers, and makeshift buildings are squeezed along with little or no escape route within the case of an emergency. Moreover, the poorly deliberate buildings, coupled with a slender street community main to those markets, make it troublesome for hearth vans to reach on time for immediate emergency intervention.
2. Defective Electrical Connections
Many retailers and stalls run their electrical connections with tangled wires, a number of extensions, and outdated wiring. With defective electrical connections in nearly each store, only one spark is all it takes to set a whole constructing on hearth. Sadly, routine electrical checks by market neighborhood heads or teams are nearly non-existent.
EXPLORE: Fire destroys building materials plaza in Nnewi
3. Lack of Hearth Security Gear
Attempt to image the final time you visited a Lagos market. Did you see any hearth extinguishers, hearth alarms or water hydrants? The unhappy reply is No. Many Lagos markets lack working hearth extinguishers, hearth alarms, or water hydrants; in the event that they exist, they’re scarce. Generally, when hearth begins, merchants can solely shout and scream for assist and watch helplessly till it spreads uncontrollably.
Nevertheless, then again, if this tools is offered, it may be used to subdue the fireplace and forestall it from escalating, inflicting minimal harm to properties whereas ready for the firefighters to reach.
4. Merchants’ Dangerous Practices
Some store homeowners retailer petrol for mills inside or near their items, and depart home equipment plugged in in a single day. Some even cook dinner of their stalls. These practices can flip small errors into main disasters, inflicting tens of millions of properties to burn down or leading to lack of lives.
ALSO READ: Tragedy as Sokoto SSG loses daughter, 3 grandchildren in fire outbreak
5. Gradual Emergency Response
Though hearth service personnel attempt their greatest, poor entry roads, blocked routes, and insufficient tools usually delay their response to fireside incidents. As a result of these components, by the point they ultimately arrive, the fireplace is already uncontrolled and can take an extended time period earlier than it is below management.
6. No Insurance coverage Safety
1000’s of companies lack insurance policy; if a fireplace outbreak happens right this moment, their enterprise could possibly be misplaced in minutes. In easy phrases, what this implies is that when a store burns down, years of financial savings and funding vanish into skinny air similar to that.
What are the mandatory steps?
-
The federal government should implement strict security requirements in all Lagos markets and all through the nation
-
Enterprise homeowners and merchants want common hearth security coaching, which will be led and held throughout the communities.
EXPLORE: Fire destroys millions-worth goods at popular Lagos market
-
Hearth hydrants, extinguishers, and different hearth security tools, together with accessible exit routes, ought to be obligatory in all marketplaces
-
Enterprise homeowners and merchants ought to discover reasonably priced insurance policy to guard their investments and financial savings.
