Like most residents of Oshodi, Agege, Mushin, Maryland, and other communities around the Ikeja military cantonment in Lagos, 75-year-old Christopher Ise remembers exactly where he was and what he was doing when the first bomb exploded at the cantonment 20 years ago, on Sunday, January 27, 2002.

“It was on a Sunday afternoon around 6 pm. We had just returned from church service and all of a sudden we heard bomb blasts. What actually caused it, we didn’t know,” Ise told me when he visited Neusroom’s office in Ikeja, on Wednesday, January 26, 2022.

George Osodi captures the explosion that shook the foundation of Lagos on January 27, 2002. Photo: George Osodi. 

He remembers how all his children fled their former residence at 17, Arowojobe street in Oshodi, but returned late in the night without his exceptionally brilliant six-year-old daughter, Adesuwa Ise, and how the news of her disappearance unsettled the family and changed his story forever.

On that day, terrific blasts shook the foundation of Lagos. No one was sure of safety in the communities around the cantonment which stretches from Maryland in Ikeja to the Bolade area of Oshodi and the Apapa-Oshodi expressway.

As a young boy living in Oshodi in 2002, I also remember how buildings shook, walls cracked, roofs were blown out, and hundreds of people died about 10km away from the scene of the explosion. It was a black Sunday!

Many of us thought the explosion from the Ikeja Military Cantonment was a terrorist attack.

It’s been 20 years since the disaster changed the story of many families. As a witness who suffered PTSD in the weeks and months that followed, I became anxious as the 20th remembrance approached. I wanted to know how the victims’ families have been faring. Where are they? Have they found closure after 20 years? What is their story? Has the nation been fair to them and the victims?

I found no satisfactory answer so I went in search of the families. Finding them took more than three weeks, I didn’t expect it to take so long after spending the first 22 years of my life in Oshodi. Those recommended by my contacts have moved out of Oshodi and are now out of reach.

I dug the internet and started picking names from a series of posts about the disaster from five to 20 years ago. I eventually found some of them on Facebook, sent messages to them and a few were willing to tell their stories.

January 27, 2002, as we saw it.

I was in a neighbour’s room with other kids at our multi-tenanted residence, in Oshodi, you could call it ‘face me I face you’ apartment, watching ‘Issakaba part 4’ when the building shook after the first blast around 6 pm.

31, Adekunle street, Oshodi: We stood outside this building on January 27, 2002, panicking and unsure of what to do as the blasts continued. Photo: Google. 

The single room was packed with about 10 kids between ages 10 and 15. We were so engrossed with the movie that we ignored the sound. The second and the subsequent blasts forced us out of the room. We started panicking as we stood outside the building looking into the sky as the blasts went up from our 31, Adekunle street residence in Oshodi, about 3km to the cantonment.

Many of us thought it was a terrorist attack.

“We thought possibly there were some issues happening in the cantonment,” Ise told me.

Four months before that day, nearly 3,000 people had died in the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in the United States. The world was still gripped with the tension of terrorist attacks that were not so prevalent in the early 2000s.

As we stood outside unsure of what to do as the blasts continued, we saw a huge crowd surging. They were mostly residents close to the cantonment. They warned us to start fleeing. ‘It’s a bomb and the fire is coming in this direction,’ some of them said. Fear gripped us.

They increased their pace as the explosions continued.

George Osodi captures some fleeing residents in Oshodi in January 2002. Photo: George Osodi. 

There were no security operatives in sight to manage the situation, no comment from the authorities to douse the fear of citizens who were unsure of what was happening or what was coming. Panicking residents started filling the void with misinformation that increased tension.

The blasts caused thousands of panicked residents in Oshodi and neighbouring areas to flee their homes in droves. Many just wanted to go far away to where they were sure of safety.

The whole area was in turmoil. Cars were abandoned on the streets with their keys, mobile phones littered the ground. Theft was probably not a priority for the usual actors that evening.

“Many people were just running down towards Ajao Estate,” Abayomi Ajibade, whose relative went missing during the disaster, told me when I visited him in Oshodi on Sunday, January 23, 2022. “Even though I was at Abesan Estate, nobody was able to come to Oshodi that night.”

Ajao Estate, a residential and industrial estate along the international airport road, in Lagos, is the closest estate to Nigeria’s busiest international airport. To the north of the estate is a stretch of swampy canal that demarcates it from Oke-Afa and Ejigbo where more than 150 military officers died in September 1992 after a military jet crashed into a canal.

Thousands of panicked residents continued to flee into Ajao Estate. When they got to the dead-end of the estate, many walked into the canal covered by water hyacinth, at that time it was already getting dark.

Ajao Estate-Ejigbo Link Bridge: Images of January 27, 2002, flooded my memory when I visited Ajao Estate on Sunday, January 23, 2022. Photo: Kingsley Ofuonye.

“On getting there, there was no route but they now saw something that looked like a road but unfortunately and unknown to them it was a swampy area, so people started jumping inside hoping that they will be able to swim to the other side,” Ajibade told me.

As we fled our homes, with my mother and two sisters, we were inundated with reports of destruction caused by the explosion. Some said the whole of Oshodi was already burnt, the fire was spreading and could catch up with us if we didn’t run faster. They turned out to be false.

We finally got to Ajao Estate and stopped a few meters away from the canal, just in front of the Christian Pentecostal Mission (CPM) headquarters. My mother insisted we would not be going beyond that point even though I desperately wanted us to proceed like others. ‘Whatever wants to kill us should come and kill us here,’ she said. And stood her ground.

The number of fleeing residents at Ajao Estate that evening could fill up the 23,000-capacity Teslim Balogun Stadium in Lagos. Most of them surged towards the canal, leading to a stampede inside the swamp.

“I also entered the canal while we were all running, as I was inside trying to walk to the other side, I realised I was stepping on people in the swamp. At that time I knew and a lot of people had already drowned while trying to cross the canal,” my former neighbour Ayodele told us when he returned home two days later.

We are yet to recover from the losses

I saw disappointment and rage on Ise’s face as he narrated his loss. It depicts the agony of a father who lost one of his most brilliant children who was already showing signs of a promising future.

Ise said his 6-year-old daughter was already dead when his son returned to the canal to search for her. Photo: Seyi Adeyemi.

“I didn’t leave the neighbourhood while the explosion was going up but all my children fled. One of my sons was the one who carried my daughter, both of them ran towards that canal as they saw everybody trooping to that way as an escape route,” he told me. “My son carried his sister on the shoulder preparing to cross the canal, while crossing there was a stampede in the canal. As he was trying to rescue himself during the struggle to get to the other side, his sister fell off his shoulder, and others were marching on those who fell in the canal. That was how many people died in the canal.”

Ise said his daughter was already dead when his son returned to the scene to search for her. “He brought her body back home on a bike around 2 am on Monday,” he said.

Later that evening, after about two hours of continuous blasts, the then governor of Lagos, Bola Tinubu, went on air to address the state, hoping to douse the fear of residents. It was too late. Tragedy had struck the city.

Adesuwa Ise, the 6-year-old girl  Photo: Christian Ise.

Although an army spokesman, Felix Chukwumah, said ‘an accidental fire’ at an ammunition depot in the cantonment caused the blasts that lasted for more than an hour and continued days after, many Nigerians including Ise who thought otherwise believed it was a conspiracy that missed its target and became uncontrollable.

When President Olusegun Obasanjo visited Oshodi on Monday morning in the company of Tinubu, he told a large crowd of displaced residents asking him to ‘go inside’ to see the level of damage to ‘shut up’.

“I don’t have to be here,” he told them as he stood atop a car addressing them. “What you’re doing does not help the situation, I take the opportunity of being around Lagos, first thing this morning to assess the situation on the ground. I don’t have to be here. The Garrison Commander, GOC and the Governor have reported to me. I have already deliberated with them. Now if I go inside and I go into your room, what do I do?”

‘Shut up’, Obasanjo told residents from the top of a car he stood to address them the morning after. Photo: George Osodi.

That morning, the full scale of the disaster was unknown to Obasanjo and the world until reports of rescue workers pulling out bodies from the canal started making news headlines.

“Fiery Explosions at a Munitions Depot Jolt a City in Nigeria,” The New York Times reports on Monday, January 28, 2002.

The Irish Times said, “Over 600 die in Lagos arms dump explosion.”

Rescue workers evacuate bodies from the Ajao Estate canal.

Obasanjo later apologised and said he was unaware at the time that lives had been lost.

Officials put the number of casualties at more than 700, with several others missing. Most of the deaths were of fleeing Oshodi residents who drowned in the canal while the Army said there was ‘absolutely no one killed’ inside the barracks.

Many never found their missing family members.

Ajibade, the Secretary of the 2002 Ikeja Bomb Blast Victim Family, never found his wife’s twin sister Taiwo Akinyemi.

He said Taiwo was energetic and worked as an assistant at a pharmaceutical store in Ikeja.

“We went to Oke-Afa and searched everywhere, they said we should go to the general hospital at Ikeja and Isolo. We continued searching, and up till today, we’ve not seen her,” Ajibade told me.

68-year-old Surajudeen Kareem also told me he never found his 19-year-old son, Sakirudeen Kareem, a 100-level Accountancy student at the Lagos State University (LASU).

Kareem lost his 19-year-old undergraduate son Photo: Facebook/Suraju Kareem. 

“Sakiru went to Apapa to see one of his mother’s sisters. When the explosion started, instead of the woman to keep him in her house, she put him on a bus and asked him to go home. We haven’t found him since then,” he said when we spoke on the phone on Monday, January 24, 2022.

“I went to the police station at Leventis, Festac, and others along that axis up till Badagry to search for him, but they said there was no record of him there. I even went to prison, searched the morgues, saw things I’m not supposed to see, I didn’t see the dead body or anything that looks like him,” he said as his voice began to faint while he sobbed as we spoke on phone on Monday, January 24, 2022.

Kareem said his son “was so brilliant, honest and diligent, and would have been 39 this year.” He described Sakiru’s disappearance as a colossal loss he’s yet to recover from.

Ise said, in her short life, Adesuwa won several awards in school as a brilliant student, “if she had added another 20 years, you know what that would have been.”

While the nation appears to have forgotten and moved on in the years since, their families are yet to find closure, as I found from my conversation with them. They are angry.

Six-year-old Adesuwa Ise died in the canal during the stampede on January 27, 2022. Photo: Christopher Ise. 

“Ever since the incident happened in 2002, maybe the government just went to the cenotaph once or twice,” Ajibade laments.

If the government’s disregard for the memory of the victims hurts the families, their woes are compounded by the government’s unfulfilled promises of compensation.

“This is going to be 20 years of losing our children, and we didn’t see anything,” an angry Kareem told me on the phone.

The Presidential Committee on the Lagos Explosion Disaster Relief Fund chaired by the then Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Ufot Ekaete, said it had raised over N500 million as of February 2002.

Ise confirmed that in November 2002, the government disbursed N500,000 to each family whose member had been confirmed dead and N250,000 to families whose members were missing.

“When we protested that the money was too small, Ufot Ekaete told us it was just a relief fund and full compensation was coming later. It’s been 20 years and the promise remains unfulfilled.”

A list of victims’ families published in the national dailies by the Federal Government in November 2002. Photo: Christopher Ise. 

In 2012, the Lagos state government under Babatunde Fashola selected and compensated 70 out of over 150 victims’ families at the opening of the Ajao Estate – Ejigbo link bridge constructed by the government and named after the victims. Since then the families have been agitating for the compensation of others.

For the families, the healing process may never be complete until the nation keeps its promise.

“During the time of Ambode, we wrote a series of letters. In that process, a lot of family representatives have died without being compensated,” Ajibade said. “If Taiwo Akinyemi was alive, she would have done something great. It’s a sad experience. Anytime this date is coming, the family is always in a pensive mood.”

“Look at what happened in the U.S, the government has compensated the 9/11 victims,” Ise said.

January 2012: Fashola compensated 70 of over 150 victims’ families in 2012 as he opened the Ajao Estate-Ejigbo link bridge named after the victims. Photo: Informationg NG. 

Aside from the yearly remembrance of 9/11 victims, compensation funds are still available to victims and their families, more than 20 years after the attack. In July 2019, the US government extended the deadline to file a claim till 2090.

Twenty years on, Ikeja bomb explosion families still wait, hoping that compensation would come.

“There is nothing God cannot do,” Ise told me when I asked why he’s hopeful that the government will remember them. Then he said, “as long as those children are crying in the grave and the government refuses to hear us, the government will not remain peaceful, that’s the truth.”

The families are still grieving but they are excited someone is reaching out to tell their stories after two decades when it appears the whole nation has forgotten.

“I really appreciate your effort, it will not be in vain,” Kareem wrote in the message he sent to me a few hours after our interview.

The cenotaph where victims were buried at Oke-Afa, Isolo. Photo: Gaurdian NG. 

Ise, 75, travelled from Ibafo in Ogun State to Neusroom’s Ikeja office to sit with me to discuss the disaster because he preferred a physical meeting.

“It is very important my dear, even though I’ve been battling a fever, I have to do this for the memory of my daughter,” he told me.

Like them, I also have a story from the disaster, it was one of the significant events that shaped my childhood, and I believe it is worth telling to remain in the consciousness of a nation that easily moves on after a disaster.

In the weeks that followed January 27, 2002, the sound of explosions and images of little children being evacuated from the canal flashed consistently in my memory. It could have been me! It’s been 20 years and like Ise, I’m still anxious about the night of January 27, 2002, and the morning after.