by Kola Lawal
On October 11, 2015, the town of Oworoshoki in Lagos was rocked by a loud explosion.
In this current climate of the “misguided brothers” of President Muhammadu Buhari on unbridled rampage, your guess is as good as mine. “Have they finally completed their visa application?”, a friend asked another. “Is Boko Haram finally in Lagos?”
It is a question in the coming days that will have to be answered comprehensively. This terrorist group called Boko Haram, on October 2, hit the nation’s capital of Abuja with three bombs.
Presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina tried to downplay the relevance of this triple terrorist bombing by saying they hit “soft targets”. Included in these “soft targets” is a divisional police headquarters in Kuja Town. Again, I suspect the number of casualties was downplayed by the Buhari government. There bombings perpetuated by at least seven suicide bombers in three different locations would not kill only 14 people. Two of those locations were very busy spots – a market and a bus station.
Back to Lagos: The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has so far explained this explosion away as a “gas cylinder” explosion from a compressor of a refrigerator attached to a building.
The first question comes to mind, how does that work? I mean, a compressor outside the building while the fridge resides inside the building. Who builds fridges that way?
The second question is why have Nigerians not got the name of the owner of this supposed “shop” where this strange fridge exploded? I don’t think it should be difficult to get this information.
I believe that this matter of a “fridge explosion” in Lagos should be of grave concern to all Nigerians. Especially, in light of the terrorism going on in the country and the avowed mission of Boko Haram of Islamizing the entire Nigeria.
The third question is how come we have a lot of combustion for a refrigerator explosion? Looking at the pictures of the explosion at Oworonshoki in comparison with a similar refrigerator explosion in the UK, one starts to wonder that there must be more than meets the eye with this “ fridge explosion”.
It is at times like this that we wonder whether NEMA is doing the citizens of Nigeria disservice by covering up the probable actual events that may have occurred or simply trying to avoid panic.
One thing is for sure though; the next few weeks will be a stern test for our security agencies to prove their salt in terms of fishing out the enemy within because if Third Mainland Bridge had been blown up some months ago, the story would have been so much different.
Nigerians are hoping this explosion was an accident as stated by authorities. I keep my fingers crossed.
(Click on any image to enlarge)
Kola Lawal an IT professional and social commentator with a knack for political debate. He is an incurable believer in the Nigerian dream. Connect with him on Facebook.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
