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Many people die and many houses fall as windstorm ravages Lagos during an early morning rain, February 13

There was nothing ominous about it in the beginning. It was an early morning rain, and in fact, the first rain some residents of the state would witness in the new year.  For a state long noted for its perennial flood problem, the beginning of the rainy season, at best, serves to   remind some Lagosians of the challenges that lay ahead.  But the rain of February 13, was different.  It was a rainstorm, the kind that many Lagosians  had not witnessed  in a long while. By the time the storm had subsided, havoc had been wreaked in different parts of the state including Yaba, Surulere, Lagos Island, Ejigbo and Otto Awori local government areas. Shock and disbelief gripped many residents as they began to count their losses, which included human lives.

One of the worst affected areas was the Ojota community in Otto Awori Local Government Development Council, a rural settlement in Lagos State. Ten pupils of a nursery/primary school as well as two women, died as a result of the storm. The victims were part of a group of people in a wooden boat heading for Igbede village, another rural community that Monday morning when the storm occurred, leading to their boat capsizing. 

Another victim of the disaster was a man said to have died when a mast pulled out from its concrete platform on Lagos Island and hit him. Aside from human casualties, many buildings were affected by the thunderstorm, from Surulere to Yaba, Ejigbo and Lagos Island. Roofs were pulled off, windows shattered, billboards destroyed, as the rainstorm hurled and flunged one valuable property after the other. The whirlwind also pulled down walls and trees, damaged cars and littered the roads with all sorts of rubbish and caused a heavy traffic problem on the Third Mainland Bridge that February 13.

One of the affected buildings is located at  No 2, Jeminatu Buraimoh Close, by the Barracks Bus Stop, Off Western Avenue, Surulere. The windstorm pulled off the roof of a section of the building and flung it to the top of another building close to it. As at Wednesday, February 15, some household items, like rug, were still found outside of the affected rooms, wet with water. The affected rooms were the office of Moses Ojo. Ojo said he was at home in the Iponri area of Lagos, that Monday morning that the rainstorm happened. He said the storm blew off part of the roof where he lived, as well as the roofs of some other houses in the area. “The rainstorm happened between 5am and 6.30am that Monday morning. By the time I woke up, I saw some people gathering in front of my block. I came down and saw that, even part of my own roof, in the middle, had been blown off. And, while there, some people came to report to me that a similar thing happened to them. I am the chairman of Iponri Housing Estate Residents Association.”

Unknown to Ojo, at that time, the roof of his office had also been blown off. He later got a phone call from one of his neighbours who told him that his office was also affected. “By the time I went there, I saw for myself, what happened. Documents were destroyed, the rug was wet.”  Ojo said further that “the rain did not last more than 30 to 45 minutes” but “it came with a heavy wind.”

Joseph Bashorun, the son of the landlord of the house where Ojo’s office is located, also said the wind that accompanied the rain was very destructive. “Even though the rain was not much, it destroyed and scattered lots of things,” he said adding that  he had met and reported the matter to the chairman of Surulere local government area who said he would come to assess the building. He appealed for government support, to enable his family repair the damage done to the building.

Close to the area is the office of the Public Defender. It was also affected by the storm. A female staff of the office who asked not to be named because she was not authorised to speak on the issue, said that the storm affected the conference office of the building. It was learnt that the building was originally scheduled for commissioning on Tuesday, February 14. The commissioning was to be done by Babatunde Fashola, Lagos State governor, but it did not hold as planned.

Another area that suffered a lot of damage is Ejigbo LGA. The storm damaged many   buildings there, leaving many residents of the area disconsolate. Lucas Abayomi, a resident of Ejigbo, described the wind that accompanied the rain as “mysterious.”  He said, for example, that the wind “ removed the roofing of a two storey school building that went on to damage another house.”

Abayomi Oyegoke, the Chief Meteorologist of Nigerian Meteorological Agency, NIMET, in his analysis of the storm, said the wind travelled at a speed of about 65 kilometres per hour. While describing the rain as isolated, Oyegoke urged Nigerians to brace up for the rainy season, as the windstorm, as seen, could be a sign of what lay ahead.

Fashola, who visited some of the affected areas in the state, said government was already working hard to mitigate the danger posed by natural disasters such as was witnessed last week.