When Ibadan Markets Burn, Everybody Loses

There is this debilitating reality about the way fire announces itself in our markets: usually at the hour when the traders have gone home believing that the day’s worries are over, and the city is sleeping under the deceptive peace of midnight. Then, suddenly, darkness acquires an orange tongue. Ibadan has seen that tongue too often. From Bode to Oranyan, Alesinloye to Soka, and other commercial corners of the city, fire has repeatedly demonstrated that a market is not merely a collection of stalls; it is a small civilisation of livelihoods, memories, debts, apprenticeships, family hopes and hard-earned capital. The latest Oranyan inferno, which began around midnight on August 24 and destroyed shops across sections of the Jankara Iso Arobo Market, is therefore not just another newspaper headline About 300 shops were reported by eyewitnesses to have been affected, although officials rightly warned that the final figure must await proper assessment.

Methinks we should resist the Nigerian habit of treating catastrophe as though it were a seasonal visitor. Bode Market also suffered a serious fire in July, particularly around its herbal section, with goods worth millions of naira destroyed; the cause was not immediately established. Soka, too, carries a not-too-old warning, same as Alesinloye Market. A fire at Ire-Akari Estate in the Soka area destroyed shops, after a furniture trader was reportedly burning refuse and sawdust. The lesson is almost embarrassingly simple: sometimes disaster does not require a sophisticated conspiracy; a careless flame, an electrical fault, an improperly stored combustible material, a generator, a gas cylinder or a spark meeting the wrong merchandise can become an inferno. In markets crowded with furniture, clothing, plastics, chemicals, herbs, fuel-related materials and other combustible goods, negligence is not merely negligence - it is an invitation written in kerosene, petrol, gas, and electric cables.

Ibadan traders, therefore, must hear this without feeling emotional: caution is cheaper than mourning. Electrical connections should be inspected, overloaded sockets abandoned, naked flames prohibited where they have no legitimate place, generators properly positioned, gas cylinders handled with extraordinary care, refuse and sawdust never burnt indiscriminately, and combustible merchandise stored with sensible separation. Market associations must not regard fire extinguishers, emergency exits, accessible lanes and night-watch arrangements as bureaucratic decorations. They are the difference between an incident and a catastrophe. And the authorities must equally abandon the convenient fiction that every market fire is simply the consequence of trader carelessness. A congested market can turn a small flame into a roaming demon. If firefighters cannot reach the heart of a market because vehicles, extensions, illegal structures or narrow passages have transformed access roads into obstacle courses, then prevention has already failed before the first siren is heard.

Government, too, must move beyond the familiar choreography of sympathy: visit the ashes, shake hands with grieving traders, promise intervention, take photographs, issue a statement, and then allow the calendar to bury the matter. The Acting Governor, Bayo Lawal, deserves commendation for visiting Oranyan with NEMA, SEMA and relevant commissioners, ordering an assessment and pledging intervention. But sympathy is the beginning of responsibility, not its conclusion. The state should conduct systematic fire-risk audits of major markets, publish the findings, enforce safety standards without political favouritism, improve access routes and water points, strengthen night surveillance, and ensure that fire stations are not merely buildings with signboards. After the 2025 Aleshinloye fire, Governor Seyi Makinde spoke of restructuring the market and creating a functional fire-safety system. That principle should become a city-wide policy rather than a response reserved for whichever market has most recently become a graveyard of commerce.

This matters because Ibadan’s markets are not ornamental features of the city’s landscape. They are economic arteries. Bode is a major centre for herbs, animal skins and traditional products; Aleshinloye has historically drawn traders beyond Oyo State’s borders; Oranyan serves diverse businesses from furniture and second-hand clothing to jewellery. These places connect producers to consumers, wholesalers to retailers, artisans to clients and families to daily income. When a market burns, therefore, the smoke does not stop at the burnt roof. It enters school-fee calculations, rent payments, workers’ wages, suppliers’ accounts, transporters’ earnings and the kitchen of the trader whose entire working life may have occupied one small shop. The market woman is often banker, employer, distributor, creditor and social safety net without ever receiving the title. To destroy her stall is to puncture several layers of the local economy at once.

It's quite imperative to commend prominent people like the Oyo State Accord Party Governorship Candidate, Alhaji Dr Oriyomi Abdulrahman Okiki Ọmọ Amusa, Senator Sharafadeen Alli, Hon. Folake Olunloyo-Oshinowo, Saheed Akinade-Fijabi, Bayo Adelabu, Oba Rashidi Ladoja and many others who donated heavy sums for Bode traders and acknowledged their efforts to rebuild. These gestures should be applauded because, in moments when a trader is standing before the ashes of a lifetime, even a practical hand extended towards him carries a meaning that campaign slogans cannot manufacture. At Oranyan, Alli has again pledged support, while Gbemileke Alagbe and Princess Oluwaseun Dosunmu visited victims and promised intervention.

But here comes the uncomfortable question for every politician already polishing the language of 2027: if you truly mean well for Ibadan, why wait for the campaign microphone before discovering the market woman? Elections have a peculiar way of making politicians suddenly fluent in the language of the poor. The trader who has been invisible for four years becomes “our mother” when posters appear; the apprentice becomes “our youth”; the market becomes “the heartbeat of the people”. Yet the real test of political sincerity is not the eloquence of a manifesto but what a candidate does when there is no podium, no ballot box and no camera waiting. Let those seeking office establish transparent market-recovery funds, support insurance and accessible credit, subventions, sponsor fire-safety infrastructure, and publish what they give and what they promise. Let government, opposition, business leaders and philanthropists compete - not in generosity for headlines, but in the seriousness of rebuilding lives. Àìsùnrá, as our elders remind us, belongs to nobody: misfortune does not check party membership before entering a shop.

Ibadan has survived wars, epidemics, political upheavals, economic storms and the slow violence of neglect. Its markets have survived because ordinary people possess an almost biblical stubbornness: they gather what the fire leaves behind, sweep the ashes, borrow money, rebuild a stall and say, “Ọlọ́run a ṣe.” That courage is admirable, but it must not become an excuse for society to keep testing the limits of human resilience. The message of Oranyan, Bode, Soka and the other fires is therefore larger than fire itself: we cannot keep praising people for rising from ashes when some of those ashes could have been prevented. Let the traders become more vigilant; let market leaders enforce discipline; let engineers, fire officers and emergency agencies become permanent partners rather than visitors after disaster; and let politicians prove that solidarity is not a campaign costume. A city that protects its markets protects its people. And if Ibadan truly wants to call itself a city of enterprise, then the first duty is not merely to applaud those who rebuild after the flames - it is to make sure fewer people have to rebuild from ashes in the first place.

Hashim Yussuf Amao is a proud son of Ibadan soil, and an advocate for a safe Ibadan city!

hashimlegalbard@gmail.com

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