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From Adanna Nnamani, Abuja
The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has condemned what it described as government negligence and corporate recklessness over recent fire outbreaks in Lagos Island, including the inferno that engulfed the United Bank for Africa (UBA) Afriland building, which claimed at least six lives.
In a statement signed by its Acting President,
Adewale Adeyanju, the congress said the tragedies were not accidents of fate but the product of systemic rot, institutional failure and disregard for human dignity.
The labour centre expressed grief over the UBA incident, where workers and customers were forced to jump from high-rise windows to escape death, and another blaze that recently destroyed shops and warehouses in the same axis, leaving losses running into billions of naira.
It described the fire outbreaks as the outcome of poor safety standards, weak enforcement, and the collapse of emergency services in Nigeria.
“These fires are totally not accidents of fate. They are products of systemic rot, institutional negligence, and the reckless disregard for safety rules and human dignity that have become the hallmark of governance in Nigeria.
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“What we are witnessing is not merely fire; it is the fire of corruption, the fire of inefficiency, the fire of collapsed institutions, and the fire of state abandonment of its fundamental duty; the protection of lives and property.
The case of the UBA, which may be a case of negligence by such a huge Bank to put safety measures in place to protect the lives of its customers and workers. In situations where the lives of workers are disregarded in pursuit of corporate profits, what you get is that basic safety precautions for workers are either downgraded or totally disregarded. Does the life of workers matter?,” the Congress queried.
The NLC accused corporate institutions of compromising workplace safety in pursuit of profit, while faulting government agencies for budgeting billions annually for emergency response yet failing to provide functional hydrants, equipment, or timely interventions. It stressed that no worker should leave home in the morning and end up in the morgue because of preventable disasters, and no trader should watch their sweat and blood go up in flames because those in charge of safety see governance as a business venture.
The union demanded an independent investigation into the UBA fire and the Lagos Island infernos, with public disclosure of findings and accountability for negligence. It also called for urgent strengthening of fire and emergency services at all levels of government, enforcement of workplace and public safety standards, and adequate compensation for victims and their families. Adeyanju insisted that Nigeria must move away from what he called “profit-over-people governance” and embrace a human-centred development model where the safety and dignity of citizens take precedence over the greed of the few.
While commending the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) for recent flood alerts, the NLC urged the agency to go beyond warnings and take proactive steps to evacuate at-risk communities and provide them with temporary resettlement. It added that long-term solutions must be found to address perennial flooding caused by water release from Cameroon’s Lagdo Dam, stressing that Nigerians cannot continue to live with disasters that could have been prevented.
The NLC called on Nigerians across all sectors to refuse to normalize what it described as a culture of death and urged citizens to unite in demanding a system where public institutions function, safety is guaranteed, and governance means protection, not abandonment. “The blood of the workers who are victims cries out for justice. The ashes of burnt buildings are testimonies of state failure. The tears of widows, orphans, and workers remind us that the struggle for a just society is not an abstraction but a necessity,” it added.
