A fire outbreak struck Terminal 1 of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, sending people in and around the facility scrambling for safety before emergency responders moved in to battle the blaze, the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has confirmed.
The authority, in a statement shared on its official X account, said its firefighting team was promptly activated upon the outbreak and was actively working to contain the situation. “FAAN wishes to inform the public of a fire outbreak at Terminal 1 of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos,” the statement read. “Our firefighting team is currently responding and working to contain the situation. No loss of life has been recorded.”
Eyewitnesses at the scene reported that individuals in the vicinity of the terminal fled immediately as the fire broke out, with emergency personnel deploying swiftly to the location. Efforts to fully extinguish the blaze were still ongoing at the time of this report, and the cause of the fire had not yet been determined by authorities.
The timing of the incident is particularly significant. Terminal 1 of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport is not currently in active passenger service — it is at present undergoing a federally commissioned reconstruction exercise aimed at restoring and modernising one of Nigeria’s oldest and most historically important airport facilities.
The terminal, which has been out of full operation for several years due to its deteriorated state, has been the subject of repeated government pledges to rehabilitate and reopen it as part of broader efforts to expand capacity at the Lagos airport, which remains the busiest and most commercially vital in Nigeria. The reconstruction work being carried out there makes the fire outbreak not only a safety concern but also a potential threat to ongoing infrastructure investment
The Murtala Muhammed International Airport, named after the late Nigerian head of state General Murtala Ramat Muhammed who was assassinated in a failed coup in February 1976, has served as the country’s primary international aviation gateway since its establishment. Located in the Ikeja area of Lagos, it handles the overwhelming majority of Nigeria’s international air traffic and is a critical node in West African aviation.
The airport operates multiple terminals, including the international terminal which handles the bulk of overseas arrivals and departures, and various domestic wings. Terminal 1, the oldest of the airport’s facilities, had in its prime years processed millions of passengers but fell into significant disrepair over decades of under-investment — a pattern that has long characterised Nigeria’s aviation infrastructure more broadly.
Aviation authorities and successive federal administrations have for years acknowledged the chronic underfunding and infrastructure decay that has afflicted Nigerian airports. In recent years, the Federal Government has moved to address this through a combination of concessioning arrangements and direct reconstruction spending, with the Terminal 1 rehabilitation forming part of that broader push.
The precise scope of the damage caused by the fire to the ongoing reconstruction works at Terminal 1 was not immediately quantified by FAAN or any other government agency at the time of this report.
FAAN, which is the statutory body responsible for managing and operating all federal airports across Nigeria, confirmed that its emergency response infrastructure was activated as soon as the fire was reported. The authority did not, in its initial public statement, provide details on how the fire started, how long it burned before emergency teams arrived, or the extent of structural damage sustained by the terminal or any equipment and materials within it.
