Nobody expected Christmas Eve to end like that.
At 4:41 p.m. on 24 December 2025, a fire broke out at the Great Nigeria Insurance House, a
commercial high-rise on Martins Street, Lagos Island. Preliminary reports indicated that the blaze
started on the fourth floor and spread rapidly to other levels of the building. Emergency
responders from the Lagos State Fire and Rescue Service arrived approximately twelve minutes
after receiving the distress call. By that time, the fire had already spread to multiple floors, and
firefighting operations were underway.
The building was not empty. It never really was.
The 25-storey plaza housed numerous stores used by traders largely as warehouses; shoes, bags,
clothes, children’s wear; goods worth billions of naira, stockpiled in cartons across multiple
floors. That Christmas Eve, some of those traders were still inside.
One of them was Nze Obum. A China-based cloth merchant visiting Nigeria during the holidays to
trade, he was helping his wife make sales when disaster struck. As the fire spread and the building
groaned, Obum phoned a fellow trader around 2 AM, trapped and pleading not to be abandoned
to die, citing his children’s age. A second, weaker call came later. Emergency responders
eventually recovered his body. Legit.ngLegit.ng
He was one of many.
A Nigerian family lost three relatives; their remains could not be properly identified. By midJanuary, confirmed deaths had risen to twelve, with recovery operations still ongoing. The fire
burned for seven straight days. Intermittent pockets of fire continued smouldering within the
debris, fed by textiles and clothing buried deep in the rubble. Sahara Reporters
But the story did not stop at lives lost.
The fire spread to surrounding properties, including the historic Old Lagos Central Mosque.
Several buildings within a 100-metre radius were compromised, and the Lagos State Government
ordered the immediate evacuation of all residents and businesses in the area. Traders who had
stored their entire Christmas stock in the building returned to find nothing. Goods worth billions of
naira, not millions, were gone in a single night. DailyPostNigeria
Governor Sanwo-Olu, who visited the scene on Christmas Day, announced the building would be
demolished. A committee was set up to manage the process. The traders who survived the fire
now faced a different battle, rebuilding a livelihood from scratch, with no insurance payout
coming. Punchnews
This is the part of adulting nobody puts in the manual.
Not the excitement of owning a shop or running a business in one of Lagos’s most active
commercial districts. Not the pride of stacking your warehouse full for the festive season. But this
standing on the street, watching the smoke rise above a building that held everything you had
built, knowing that nothing was covered.
The NIIRA Act 2025 exists precisely because of moments like this. It mandates that public
buildings, including commercial plazas like the GNI House, carry insurance that protects owners,
traders, visitors, and the public from exactly this kind of catastrophic, unplanned loss, not as a
bureaucratic exercise, but because real people- people with children, businesses and christmas
plans, walk into these buildings every day trusting that someone has taken responsibility for what
might go wrong.
Two products. One purpose: to make sure this never destroys what you have built.
IGI Fire Insurance protects your stock, contents, building, and loss of income in the event of a fire
outbreak so that when the unthinkable happens, you are not starting from zero.
IGI Public Liability Insurance covers your legal responsibility to members of the public who are
injured or suffer property damage on your premises, a statutory obligation under the NIIRA Act
2025, and the protection that stands between one terrible event and the complete collapse of
everything you have built.
Nze Obum had plans. He had children. He had business. What he did not have was a policy that
could have secured what he built, for the people he left behind.
Do not wait for a bad Christmas eve to happen, get covered today.
Sources:
• Punch Nigeria: Key facts on NIIRA 2025 compulsory insurances in Nigeria
• Sahara Reporters: Family Says After Losing Three Relatives In Collapsed 25-Storey Lagos
GNI Building Fire | Sahara Reporters
• Punch Nigeria: Lagos Orders Evacuation Around Burnt GNI Building
• Legit.ng: Businessman Who Was Trapped Inside Lagos Great Nigeria Building Breaks
Hearts – Legit.ng
