Between 7. 30 am and 8.00 am, Sunday January 11, 2026, Federal Housing Authority (FHA) Estate, Nyanya, Abuja. I was in my apartment preparing for church service in my church, Living Faith Church, that holds at 8.00 am. I heard the sound of a siren which appeared to me like it was issuing forth from one of those ubiquitous, usually dilapidated mini vehicles that dispense ice cream, yoghurt, pop-corn, groundnuts and other delicacies to excited children and teenagers.
From my apartment where I sat, I lifted up my eyes and saw that the siren with that limp voice was actually blaring forth from a giant Federal Fire Service truck. It was driving at a very leisurely pace and also because of the kindergarten nature of the voice of the siren which was not screaming in loud voice the urgency of its mission, I thought it was an ice-cream dispensing toy vehicle.
As this vehicle drove past the vicinity of my apartment in the manner just described, I did not put any particular significance to its appearance in my neighbourhood because that was a very rare sight indeed that early part of the morning. It was very unusual. For quite some time now I have forgotten that the Fire Service still exists and that distressed citizens can and do call it up to perform some kind of emergency service for them. So I lost interest immediately in this truck that I saw and refocused my attention on the duty of preparing for the church service that I had in mind to attend.
After a few minutes, I saw the fire truck return from the next street from mine to which it had earlier gone. The church is located just a few metres away from my house so as soon as 8.00 am was approaching, I was walking my way to the church. A few metres away from my house I saw a group of people gathered in front of a two- storey building containing six flats of two-bed-room accommodation.
Although I sensed that I might not arrive church a few minutes before opening time as I usually do, I did not want to behave like the Priest and the Levite in the Good Samaritan Story in Luke 10: 25- 37. According to the story these two Godly men saw the injured Good Samaritan who was robbed, stripped and left half dead by the roadside. When those two men of God who were on their separate and different missions arrived at the juncture where the injured man laid, they each considered their missions as more important and urgent than pausing for even a brief moment to attend to a man who obviously needed a care before proceeding to their Godly destinations. So when I beheld that crowd gathered in front of the burnt two-storey building, I stopped and asked what was wrong.
I was told that as is the practice with our epileptic power supply authority, there was the usual early morning power cut characteristic of its performance in that neighbourhood in the past few days and when light was restored at about 7.30 am that Sunday morning, there was a surge which sparked and tripped off the light and set two apartments in the topmost floor of that two- storey building on fire.
I was told that everything in those two flats were completely burnt to ashes including the car keys of a car belonging to one of two occupants of those two flats. The other four flats in that ill-fated building suffered various degrees of destruction or spoilages of some of their property.
The pathetic story of the misfortune of tenants in that apartment building set me thinking. Most of our villages, towns and cities and other habitations do not appear built for conducive and safe habitation. First, the fire service truck in this story.
One would expect that a neighbourhood like the FHA Nyanya in the capital city of our country would have a well -equipped, well trained officers and well run fire trucks that can respond quickly to emergency calls. This is not the case. I was told that the truck we saw which failed to be of any real help to the residents of that two-storey building came from Karu another neighbourhood some two or three kilometres away from the Federal Housing Estate.
And when that fire truck arrived the vicinity of the FHA Nyanya at a place popularly called Mango Tree, there was an overhead embarkment across the road into the FHA that is meant to block access of heavy duty trucks such as the fire one from going in and helping to despoil some of the untarred streets in that estate. So, this firetruck had to go back and traverse the Karu Road from whence it had come up to two kilometres away before it could find an entrance street called Veterinary Road in the popular MOPOL Junction before it could navigate its way into the Cascurina street venue of the fire accident. This torturous navigation caused the fire truck to arrive too late to be able to save the two apartments that had earlier caught fire.
Apart from the lack of fire and security services facilities located at strategic places to respond quickly when called, the roads of the streets of most of our settlements are not always in a state to facilitate easy movement. Most of the streets in the FHA Nyanya, for instance, are untarred and some of them have for long been eaten up by erosion. The street in front of my estate is so rocky and worn out that no one can run speed on it to go and fight any fires or crimes or threat to security. In short, most of our towns and cities are not built for modern habitation. We mostly survive on the mercies of God. Truth is: we need to urgently rethink our development journey and focus attention on providing the very basic facilities necessary for modern living. We cannot continue to live the way we are doing now in most parts of our country. we ae just existing and not living.
