Fire Service Saves 2,106 Lives, ₦934.7 Billion Property In 2025

The Federal Fire Service (FFS) has disclosed that it saved 2,106 lives and ₦934.70 billion worth of property from different fire incidents across Nigeria in 2025.

The FFS Deputy Controller-General, Ijeoma Achi-Okidi in charge of Policy, Planning, Research and Statistics made the statistics available to newsmen in Abuja on Thursday.

According to the report; in the year under review, FFS recorded 1,866 fire incidents, from which 114 lives were lost, 198 citizens and five firefighters injured.

“The total estimated property loss was approximately N74.75 billion which indicates that FFS successfully protected about 92.59 per cent of the total value at risk.

“The overall fatality rate was 61.09 deaths per 1,000 fire incidents, highlighting the significant human impact despite effective property protection,” the statistics stated.

A breakdown of fire outbreaks according to premises type, indicated that private residences had the highest number of fires with 693 fires, followed by public buildings and government offices with 444 fire incidents.

“Markets and trading centres recorded 190 fires, vehicles/automobiles; 177 fires while other types of premises were 105.

“39 persons died from markets and trading centres fire, 22 persons due to automobile fires, 18 persons in public/government offices fire, 10 deaths due to banks fire while 10 persons died from other fires.

“Deaths from markets inferno was responsible for over a third of all fatalities, likely due to high occupancy and rapid fire spread in crowded trading environments,” the report read.

The report further revealed that market fires led to the loss of ₦22.27 billion, followed by private residences: ₦14.67 billion, public/government buildings: ₦11 billion, educational institutions: ₦8.16 billion and fuel/gas stations: ₦4.92 billion.

It also indicated that in 2025, the leading causes of fire incidents were electrical related issues such as: power surge/overload, wiring faults, causing nearly 70 per cent of all fires recorded in the year.

In addition; the report read that, though gas explosions fire didn’t occur as much as other sources of ignition, it had the highest fatality rate per incident.