And The World Shifted
An essay about the explosion that happened in Ibadan on the 16th of January, 2024 — from Azeeza Adeowu
Jan, 16, 2024
Ibadan, Nigeria.
I think my least favourite thing about the world is that it doesn’t send warnings before something terrible happens. You could be having a perfect day, an okay day, a nothing-out-of-the-usual day, and then…an explosion goes off.
Some days after the explosion, I kept obsessing in my mind, wondering if the universe had sent some signs and we missed it. I missed it. Maybe the blackbird crying on the power line, the basketball player who fell and slid on the court, or the speck of dust that entered my eye while on a bike. Maybe those were the signs? It didn’t matter that seeing these signs I was obsessing over wouldn’t have prevented it. But perhaps it could have prepared us?
Tuesday went like this: I had a long meeting with my boss, had coffee, observed my prayers, and went out for a boat cruise at Eleyele with my boyfriend and friends. Everything went well, I loved the boat cruise. I took lovely pictures of myself and the book I was reading. I put my hand close to the river so that the water kept splashing on my palm, and then I let drops of the water fall on my monochrome trousers.
After the boat cruise, we played games, and after five or so rounds of charades, we said our byes. I was hungry, so my boyfriend and I looked for a place we could eat. I had rice that tasted better than it looked, and we left there for the stadium where my housemate was playing a basketball match. We didn’t stay long before we went to Arnheim for Tuesday salsa.
Arnheim, Jericho
It was while I was at Arnheim that the explosion went off. It was around seven forty-four P.M. People were inside dancing and I was outside with friends discussing something related to video creation. We heard a “pop sound” that paused our conversation but was not loud enough to make us run. We argued about whether the sound was from a thunderstorm and whether it was the sound that sent the flock of birds flying like they were being chased. We told Laolu not to overthink the sound when he started using metaphors to describe what the sound felt like. He said, “You know that feeling when you’re in a car with all the windows rolled up, and someone closes the last door, and it goes boom! Like being suddenly shut out of the world, and you feel the rush of air in your ears?”
Some minutes later, we stepped into the salsa room. It’s an enclosed part of the restaurant with wooden chairs and tables that match the traditional aesthetics of Arnheim. There are pieces of art on the wall. The art pieces change now and then, but my current favourite was of a woman with a face you couldn’t really read. She seemed blank. Like she used to be full of life, and something had just wiped it out.
I sat down to watch people dance. The vibe was different. More people were dancing, and the dance had changed from salsa to line dancing. I took out my phone and made videos.
No sooner had I finished making one video than I saw WhatsApp statuses overthinking the sound we told Laolu not to overthink. There were different speculations, including a bomb, a gas explosion, and a scream from some angry ancient goddess.
We stayed updated with news and speculation until we got a call from Femi, Laolu’s housemate, explaining that there was a loud explosion in their area, Adeyi Avenue. He had gone on a walk and returned home to pandemonium: people screaming, running, and a sky full of smoke so that he couldn’t find his way into the estate.
My stomach started to shift then. Adeyi is a familiar place. It is where my boyfriend lives. If I’m not in my home, I’m probably at his. I had logged out of my Twitter some weeks ago to reduce my screen time, but when I saw that all the news springing up was from the app, I considered logging in.
Ikolaba, Ibadan
On the drive home, we talked about how some people said it was a gas explosion at Sango, a fire in Ace Mall, a bomb, an explosive kept by illegal miners. We contemplated going towards the estate, but when we got to the junction to my house, we saw too many cars passing in a hurry, the voices of people louder than usual, and there was a thick smoke in the air. We hadn’t known then that what we thought was smoke was actually dust.
People started to call me.
“Azeeza, what’s up? Are you okay? I heard about the explosion.”
“Hey, hope you’re safe?”
“Is it far from your place?”
I also got a call from my aunt in Osogbo. The news has reached Osogbo now now? I was saying. I picked it up, but my aunt hadn’t heard about the explosion. She wanted to greet me and wanted to pray I find a great job and a husband that is the bone of my bone, but mostly about the husband. I barely spoke.
I couldn’t sleep that night. Not after we went to the maishayi to get what to eat and met with some people who filled us in with their version of the explosion, not after we saw an ambulance speed by in a hurry, not when we saw a police van drive into my street and zoomed back out, not after we saw horrific pictures and videos and news that people are dead, stuck, injured and that it actually happened inside the estate that I frequent like a second home.
I kept waking up in the night. I barely slept for two hours in total. At some point during the night, Governor Seyi Makinde mentioned that two people had died and about seventy-seven were injured. He said that investigations were still ongoing, but from the current findings, the blast was a result of some explosive devices stored by illegal miners occupying a house in the area. He mentioned that the government will cover the medical bills of victims and provide temporary accommodation for those affected.
Dejo Oyelese, Adeyi Avenue
The following day, the knot in my stomach was still there, and it became very tight and painful when I got to the estate. My mom had called me earlier to tell me they said there might be a second explosion, they said we should walk gently because the earth is shaking, and they said we shouldn’t go near the explosion site. My friends live there. How could I not go?
Nothing looked normal when we got to Adeyi Avenue. Adeyi is at Old Bodija, and one thing about this place is its quietness. You could find yourself walking alone on the street.
But nothing is normal today, not the five hundred and one people who were walking in and out, not the uniformed men guarding the gate, not the army vans packed by the road, and not the roofs of people’s houses. The place looked more terrible the farther we walked into Dejo Oyelese Street. We weren’t allowed to walk to the main site because it was blocked by police officers. We saw some friends in front of their homes. We spoke a bit about what happened. One of them said if he had taken just a few more steps, he would be dead.
“I’m going to get a tattoo of yesterday’s date,” Paul said.
“Guy, this thing that happened. It has messed me up, mann. I think this is a second chance to reevaluate our lives,” Wole said.
They mentioned that someone was still in shock that he could barely speak and listed the people they knew who were dead. Paul had a camera hanging around his neck. He said he’d been taking pictures, and he showed us. They were terrible. More terrible than the government and Twitter had let on. If people on Twitter saw this, they wouldn’t have made memes about the explosion. I saw one meme that said, “Wow. So even Ibadan first me blow in this Nigeria.” Another Twitter user said, “So na Ibadan all of una dey live, una con put location for Lekki.”
My stomach knotted more and more as we slid through the images. I couldn’t go on, so I looked around instead. It was hard to believe this was the same Dejo Oyelese I know. Some buildings had turned into dust — some were barely there, and some had lost their entire roofs. It was hard to believe that people lived here. It looked like an abandoned war-ravaged site.
“See this, Azeeza,” Laolu called my attention to a picture. About six cars were sitting on top of each other, and each one looked like Burna Boy used his boot to step on an empty Peak milk can.
“Oh My God,” escaped from my mouth. Paul mentioned that the house they took the picture had fine cars that they always admired. And now, everything was gone.
There were two women seated by a blue gate. Their faces remind me of the artwork I like so much at Arnheim. We ran into other people, a lady who was about to open her door when the explosion went off. She said she was confused so that she didn’t know if to run inside or outside. A young man who thought he was sinking because the sand rose to his knees. A friend who was walking home had to pause when someone said there was a fire nearby and they needed to call firefighters. He was searching Google for Ibadan Fire Service when the explosion went off in front of him.
“You know the worst part of this for me?” Paul was saying.
“What?”
“The screams,” he said. His face scrunched into pain. “People were screaming under the rubble from their homes. Help, Help, Help. I swear, I can still hear their voices.”
I started to hear their voices too.
“Things just started to fly around. Roofs, shards of glass, metal sheets, everything was flying, and you couldn’t see because the dust took over the entire place?” Wole said. “It was those flying things that hit the guy that lives there,” he pointed to a house. “It slit his stomach, and his insides poured out.”
I kept asking, “Why would anyone bring dynamite inside their home?” There were confirmations that the explosion was a result of dynamites and other explosive materials in a house that belonged to a miner. An illegal miner who isn’t from Nigeria. They said the miner wasn’t around, and his family left shortly before the explosion.
“Everyone in this area knows this miner guy,” someone was saying. “I don’t know why his picture isn’t circulating yet.”
The word “shock wave” kept replaying in my head. I had never heard the phrase so many times in my life.
That evening, after I got home, I became so sad, and my stomach started to twist. I decided that I needed to leave my house for a place where I could see and talk with other humans about other things. I decided to go to Tunde Odunlade Gallery — they host an artsy event every Wednesday that involves spoken words, games, or conversations around the origins of people and concepts in Nigeria. I dressed up to go out, and then I started to cry when I realised that it’s easy for me to move on, that I get to find a way to scrape the sadness that sat in my stomach. What about the direct victims of the explosion? What about the injured ones? What about the people who just watched their homes turn into nothing? What about the dead ones?
Maishayi: The Hausa term for someone who sells any combination of bread, noodles, and fried eggs.
Azeeza Adeowu is a storyteller, book reviewer, and content marketer based in Nigeria. Some of her works have been featured on websites like Amaliah, Brittle Paper, Hikaayat, Blue Minaret, and Muslim Girl. In 2021, she was shortlisted for the Kendeka Prize for African Literature and nominated for the Awele Creative Trust Award.
She spends most of her time reading, binge-watching old movies, painting flowers, and going out to have fun (read: watching people go about their lives while imagining their stories).
You can find her on her blog where she rants, fangirls and writes her opinions at www.thezyzah. and connect with her on Twitter @thezyzah.
