May Nigeria not happen to you

It was a fine evening. My living room was full, and I was in my Arsenal jersey, watching Newcastle against Arsenal, away, in a crunch match. Arsenal had played well but gone behind, until a Mikel Merino goal brought us level. It was one–one, with the last corner kick of the game to come.

The corner is swung in, and Gabriel, our number six, towers above everybody to win it in the last minute. I'm ecstatic, and nobody else is. I was hosting a birthday for a friend who had just come in from the United States, and every friend and cousin in that room wanted me to lose.

The generator was running that evening. This is a highbrow area where the power supply is normally excellent, but the rain and windstorms seemed to have damaged something in the power lines, and for days the electricity had been bad. The batteries in our homes never fully charged, and my guests used the microwave a number of times to warm their food, which drained what was left until the power went. Before the match we had gone out to start the generator, borrowing one of my friend's batteries because its own was bad, and one of the security guards helped us. We laughed the whole time, scared of being electrocuted.

It was an ordinary evening, and none of us knew what was a few hours away.

As the party winds down, my cousin and the celebrant are getting along very well, and I shake my head in approval. That's my cousin. The last guest, a good friend, leaves just before midnight.

I don't eat cake, because I'm lactose intolerant, and there was a lot left, more than half of it. I carry all of that out to the two security guards at the gate, who are armed with a gun. Both are young. They loved it, and they thanked me. Very lovely fellas.

Then I go in to work a little and sleep, because tomorrow is Monday, and every Monday at 10 a.m. my company holds a stand-up meeting.

I fall asleep around 1:30 with my windows open, which is how I had been sleeping while the electricity was bad and the batteries were uncharged.

Just after 2 a.m. the inverter runs out of battery and starts its beep, beep, beep, which wakes me. I switch it off and go back to bed.

Around three I hear something that could be rain or heavy wind. My flat is on the ground floor, the very first one in the compound and the closest to the gate, so with the windows open I hear everything.

For context, the area is still being developed, so there is empty land beside us where Fulani settlers live, with mud houses, cattle and goats.

The sound continues. A carpenter once left a claw hammer in my flat, and I keep it under my bed, just in case. I take it and stay away from the window. I can hear voices now, and I'm tempted to call out to Barnabas, the senior guard, to ask if all is well, but I hold on.

I hear what might be a shot, then another, and a commotion. A voice shouts in Hausa: “You f***er, come down from there.” I assume someone has tried to jump the fence and the guards have caught him. Then there is another shot.

Next comes screaming, still in Hausa, which I understand: “Come out! Where are they? Where are they?” There is a huge bang at my door, and they come in.

I expect to see our two guards searching for an intruder. Instead I make out a ski mask, a torch, something that looks like a pistol, and a long knife.

I'm standing in the dark with a hammer, ready to attack, although I can see that I'm outgunned. If that torch finds me holding anything that looks like a weapon, I'm dead. I put the hammer down and pretend I'm only just waking up.

By the time they reach my bedroom they have searched the jeans I left on the sofa. They take my laptop from the bed, where it always is, and when they ask for my phone I point to it. One of them wants me to make a bank transfer, but another says, “No, let's move.”

“Who else is here?”

“I'm the only one,” I answer, in English. They are speaking Hausa, a language I understand and speak, and I don't want them to know that.

Three of them search the rooms, and then they leave for the next flat.

I answered in English. I didn't want them to know I understood every word.

I can hear screams, loud screams. I still hear them today, as if they are happening now.

My first fear is for the family upstairs, young women living with their mother and aunt. They are from Gambia, and we trade food: when they cook, they send some down, and when I cook, I send some up. We had done it that very day. I had grown attached to them, and I felt it was on me to defend them, yet I don't know how many attackers there are. I only know we have been overrun.

As soon as the robbers leave my flat, I push my travel documents and my money deep into the laundry bag. It isn't a lot of money. It is a security measure, because if they come back and find cash they may decide I have more, or that I'm a high-value target worth carting away.

My mind races. Where are the guards? Are they part of this, or have they run, or been caught, or been shot? Should I leave by the back door and jump the fence into the empty land? What if the Fulani settlement is in on it? Nigeria was living through insecurity and banditry, and in that moment you suspect everyone.

I gather courage and move to a room that faces the gate. Our windows are tinted, so nobody outside can see in while I can see out, and someone is standing guard at the gate. If they can spare a man just for the gate, there must be many of them.

That is when I accept that I can only defend. There is a very high chance I won't leave alive, and I can't play the hero when I don't know what is happening out there.

I go to the kitchen and go down on one knee beside the fridge, where nobody coming through the back door can see me first, and I hold my position. I want to think about my little sister and my family, but I don't allow it, because that would weaken me and I need a clear head.

I make peace with one thing. I expect whoever comes back to come to kill me, and if they do, I must take their life. At the very least I must injure them badly enough that they will have to explain it for the rest of their lives, and DNA evidence must be left. I would have to be precise and brutal, so that if they killed me it would be quick, as quick as I meant to be with them.

The screaming goes on, and doors are being shot or kicked open. I don't even know which happened to mine. I hadn't double-bolted it, because this is a very safe area, minutes from the president's residence, where an unfurnished one-bedroom costs at least five to six million naira and the new judges' quarters stand right behind us.

Eventually the noise dies down and cars drive off. Then I hear a voice I know on a radio: the junior guard, on the local vigilante walkie-talkie, calling for backup. The other guard has been shot, he says. It is Barnabas.

I treated those two as brothers. I shared food with them, we greeted each other every day, and they were always respectful. Barnabas I saw daily, and I really liked his energy and how steadfast he was about his work. I pick up my hammer and walk out, the first person in the compound to step outside.

It is dark and raining lightly. The compound's solar lights are dead, and so are the street lights, because after a week of cloud none of them had charged.

To my right I see a body, although I don't yet know it is a corpse, and I assume it is the woman who cleans for us. She is face down, wearing only a shirt, in a pool of blood, and my first thought is that they tried to assault someone and shot her for fighting back. I go closer to look for signs of life and find none. The body looks a little frozen. The whole attack had lasted perhaps half an hour.

At the gate I find the junior guard, and a guard from a neighbouring building who has come with a gun. A sudden loud noise makes us all jump. I ask the armed one how many bullets he has, and he says three or four. I tell him that if he won't use the gun, I know how to shoot, and that he must man the gate.

I don't know where that courage came from. I tell him to fall back into one of the two blocks if he sees anything, and I ask for the door of the other block to be shut, so that if they return we can at least slow them down.

Then I look at Barnabas. Someone has attempted first aid with a piece of cloth. His fingers are dangling, and he is clearly bleeding.

My own car has a dead battery, and the mechanic was due that very morning. I ask for a car, quietly, because the attackers may still be nearby, even inside the building. We are 20 flats in two blocks, and everyone is too frightened to come out.

The junior guard goes all the way upstairs and comes back with a neighbour's car keys. As I reverse, the parking camera shows that I'm about to drive over the body, so I go forwards instead, swing the car round and damage the bumper of the car beside it. I remember saying, “Don't worry, I'll fix it.”

I pull up at the gate, and we lift Barnabas into the back seat.

“Nearest hospital,” I say, and I look at each of them and say it again. We need to focus, and we need a hospital.

The neighbour who owns the car wasn't robbed, because his door held. I ask if he has data, and he does, so I take his phone, type “hospital”, and Maitama District comes up. I tell him to get in, and he sits in the passenger seat of his own car.

I put my foot down and warn them that I'm not stopping for anybody, whether it is a checkpoint or the police. For all I know, these people are robbing another building down the road. “If you see anything, duck.” I meant every word. We would either get him help or die trying.

I remember the number 80 on the dial, though whether it was miles or kilometres I can't say. I remember the car's owner gripping my leg and telling me to slow down. I slow down, take a turn, then another. The hospital was about six minutes away.

The gates are closed, and we have to wait for the security man to wake up and open them, at a hospital. Then I remember that this is Nigeria, where things don't work the way they should.

I drive to the entrance with my hand on the horn, shouting for help, and they bring a wheelchair. I nearly lose my temper. I want a gurney, and I'm so angry I can't even find the word. “No,” they tell me. “Those are for dead bodies.”

That was when I knew we were in trouble. We lift Barnabas into the chair. The last time I ever touched him was to set his feet on the footrest so they wouldn't drag along the floor, and then they wheel him in.

Inside, the staff seem dazed, and some are on their phones. They say they'll need medication. I tell them that we've just been robbed, so I have no phone, but I have money and I can pay. “Give him the best treatment.” I come close to threatening them.

They say he needs a hospital card, although that does not stop them treating him, and I want that to be clearly understood. The person who issues cards is away and has left only a phone number. I can't say for certain whether that was on this visit or the next.

Barnabas was now in their hands, and I still didn't know if anyone at home was hurt. They wanted me to stay, perhaps because they thought I would zoom off without paying. I told them I would be back, said, “Let's go,” and zoomed off against their wishes.

At the compound it is still raining lightly, and everyone is gathered under one of the carports. I go straight to the women and ask, “Does anybody need help?”, because I don't know whether anyone has been assaulted. “Nobody was touched,” they tell me. Nobody is physically hurt, which is a relief.

I even recognise someone from my high school in the crowd, and we talk briefly.

The police have been, and the body is gone. We try to piece together what happened while I was away.

Then it becomes clear which neighbour nobody has seen: the lady who always walks her dog, a lovely, beautiful woman. It is probably her, although nobody is sure yet.

I should say this plainly: I never met her, and we never spoke. I would see her walking her dog, but I typically keep to myself, especially with people I don't know.

Before going back to the hospital I remember the backup phone in my cupboard, and I charge it in the flat opposite mine to about 10 or 15 percent, which is enough. With internet I can send money abroad through LemFi and get into my social media, and luckily my two-factor authentication still works. I message the last friend who left my house that night to say what has happened, that people here have died, and that I'm safe. I ask her to tell my best friend to find me, because I know he will.

At the hospital there is confusion. Someone switches off the oxygen and is screamed at to turn it back on. Barnabas is getting worse and needs to be moved to another hospital immediately, but they are still working out who will take him, because there is an ambulance and no driver.

I go to pay. I now have internet, because someone shared their Wi-Fi, and I ask for the account number, only to be told that the card machine isn't working. The staff there have plainly been sleeping on duty, since there is a bed in the room, and I tell them so: “You came to work, and you came to sleep.”

When I finally reach the clerk's office, she tells me to check my blood pressure. I was very direct with her, and I could have been nicer. This was life and death, though, and once again they had shown ineptitude: her desk should never have been left unmanned.

When I return to the ward, Barnabas's supervisor has arrived. He has come with a corpse, and I recognise it. It is her, our neighbour.

Then I see them fighting for Barnabas's life. He had been screaming, and now he makes no sound while they beg him to stay awake. I stand at the door. I have already accepted that he will probably die, because too much time was wasted.

I think: this could have been me. I saw him four hours ago. I gave him cake four hours ago. He can't die, God. I did everything. I left my house, I was the first one out, I risked my life, I drove another man's car, and I got him here in time. Surely, God, you won't let him die.

It was the first time I watched a person die in front of me. It is not something you want to see.

It was the first time I watched a person die in front of me. It is not something you want to see.

His supervisor breaks down. I hold him, and for the first time that night I nearly cry too, but I keep it together. I tell him it isn't his fault and make him sit, because he is in shock. He goes back into the room insisting he can hear a heartbeat, and I signal to the doctor to indulge him.

Outside, the other guards are holding their heads. The vigilantes are young men with few other opportunities, who take up arms to protect people for very little pay. It is a brotherhood. They are noble, strong men, yet watching one of their own die overwhelmed them that night. I console them and ask them to take care of things there.

The hospital needs documents for the two dead, so I drive home again. All the way I'm thinking that maybe he isn't really dead, and maybe he will wake up. How do I tell everyone?

I arrive determined to stay composed. A neighbour asks how the guard is doing, and I whisper, “He didn't make it.” “What do you mean?” I say it a little louder. “He didn't make it?!” He screams it, and now all the women have heard.

Barnabas's junior colleague collapses, crying. Perhaps I shouldn't have told them, but I couldn't hold it in any longer. I tell the young man that it isn't his fault and that this is survivor's guilt. One of the women says, “He was so brave. He tried to fight them off. I will make sure his son is always taken care of.”

We need our neighbour's ID. Nobody else will enter her flat, so I go up, and it looks ransacked. The door that leads to the balcony is slightly open, so I walk out onto it.

The balcony rail comes in two sets that meet at a single hinge joint on a central pillar. On one set the bottom rail is bent outwards, and that joint has given way. There is no blood. On the ledge lies an iPhone, still charged and full of notifications, and I think she was calling someone as it happened.

I'm six foot one, and she was perhaps five foot five or six. At her height a fall would be easy, but why is the bottom rail bent outwards? It didn't add up. I gave the phone to the police as evidence.

Inside we find her ID cards, and I take one that carries her full name. There is a press pass too, because she was a correspondent for a news station.

I take the junior guard with me, driving with one hand and resting the other on his chest while I tell him not to blame himself.

I will never know where that strength came from. I was tested that day, and I'm not displeased with how I acted, because in chaos I stayed calm. Maybe it is my jiu-jitsu training. Maybe, as a Muslim, I accept death easily. Maybe it was luck. I never want to find out again.

At the hospital I finally pay, and I learn that money was what they cared about. Even then, I had to grease the coroner's palm with 5,000 naira each. He looked me in the eye and said that was what it would take to “mobilise” him. He was an elderly man with no remorse, and to him it was routine. I felt defeated, and I lost faith.

I paid for a week in the morgue for each of them and left my number. I handed everything over to the supervisor and took his number, for when I had a SIM card again.

Back home I check on my neighbours. I pray the morning prayer in the Gambian family's flat and tell them I won't leave until they are safe. Their employer, a multinational NGO, has already sent someone, and the police are around, so it is safe now.

I pack a few things, since my door is wide open anyway. Outside, a crowd has gathered, and my mechanic spots me before I notice him. I haven't slept all night. I give him the car keys and leave.

The first hotel is full. On the way to a far more expensive one, I decide the cost doesn't matter, because this is my life. Then I notice a hotel owned by people I used to know, and I take a suite on the top floor. It is about 9 a.m.

I can't sleep. By 11 a.m. my friend has passed on my message, and my best friend finds me, as I knew he would. “You're still breathing heavily,” he says. “You need to calm down.” I realise I'm running on pure adrenaline.

We replace my SIM card and return to the compound, where people applaud as I walk in. “This is my neighbour, the strong one!” The vigilantes point me out to each other. It felt like being a minor celebrity, and I couldn't understand it. People had died, so what was there to cheer? I had done nothing anyone else wouldn't have done.

I write my police statement. A few inspectors look at me as though I might be involved, and I give them a look that says they should drop that line of thought. They seem to get the message.

That night someone tries to reach me. By now I trust nobody, and I take no ordinary phone calls, only encrypted ones over my private VPN. The caller is impressed and asks if I've had security training, which I haven't. I tell him, “I don't know who you are. You could be anybody.” He tells me he is the Commissioner of Police.

He says the news is reporting the incident very differently and blaming the police, none of which I have seen. I felt he was an honourable man, but I was trusting no one. I tell him, “Sir, I understand, but I am not speaking to the press, and I won't go on the record to support the police's account.” I will speak publicly only if the family of the deceased permit it.

I look for the family by messaging people on Instagram who share her surname, so they can reach me if they need information, but nothing comes of it.

That night, to my surprise, I sleep soundly through rain and thunder. I have no appetite. I tell my sisters I'm fine and ask them not to tell our mother. My biggest worry is work, because we have a very serious deadline this week, one that needs my particular expertise, and my laptop is gone. Maybe that was also my way of dealing with the trauma: my mind needed work.

The next morning I go to the gym and do pull-ups, still unable to eat. I sip a little Lucozade and start on one banana, which takes me an hour or two to finish. The only time I had felt like this before was years ago, during a spell of stress-induced restlessness.

People had died. What was there to cheer about?

That first evening, 29 September, I posted one tweet.

“When I'm ready, I'll share details.” I said it then and I meant it, and this piece is me keeping that promise. In hindsight, maybe I should not have posted at all. Almost three million people saw that tweet, and it was the beginning.

By the next morning a different story was everywhere. On air, her own colleagues said she had reached the hospital alive and been rejected because staff wanted identification. One post making that claim passed a million views, with clips of the broadcast attached. They said she had jumped out of fear, and others said she had begged for her life and nobody would touch her.

I knew it was false. I was the first person from the building to see her after she fell, and I saw no life. Later I saw her body at the hospital. I had personally paid for and filled in both hospital cards, hers and Barnabas's, brought her ID to the hospital myself, and paid for a week in the mortuary for each of them. At 9:11 that morning I replied.

Here is each claim beside what I saw, with links to the reports themselves.

The replies came at once. One said that if you refuse to write your story, others will write it for you. Another told me to type what happened and stop using her to gain relevance, and another said the man acting as a witness needed to be investigated. Then the death threats began. People said I must be involved because of my name and my tribe, and that I should be picked up for questioning.

Every media house wanted me to “clear the air”. The messages never stopped, from different newspapers and stations, in my LinkedIn, my Twitter and my Instagram, again and again, while reporters came to the compound every day asking for me. It was harassment. I stopped responding and gave them all one answer: “I won't go on air until I've spoken to the family.”

Today my full name is all over the media, and my old address is out there. One outlet published my name and my face, and nobody asked my permission. How crazy is that?

Let me be clear: I do not trust the press, and least of all the network she worked for. They did a terrible job. Nobody in our compound could have told them that story.

Then there was this. Her network's management visited her parents and published the photographs. You can see one in the paper of 1 October, which shows her mother with her hands on her head. Why would you do that? Why would you put a mother's most vulnerable moment in front of the whole country? People online asked them the same thing. I will not reproduce those pictures here.

In all that noise, nobody thought about the guards. Barnabas was 29, with a wife and a child, and his colleague was 25. They were traumatised young men who still had to guard that building, so I went every day. I checked there were no reporters, then brought food and water and asked what they needed. If they needed food or gas, I sent money.

Eventually I moved from the hotel to a friend's home and kept a low profile.

The network still wanted me on air. I spoke to them only through Twitter messages, because a phone number, once shared, spreads. They said they had been with the family, and that the family wanted me to talk. I said, “No. Not until the family contact me themselves, or you give me their direct number.” The decision is theirs.

This is their grief. It is not my grief. It's not my story.

I ask myself why it happened. A great deal failed that night: the hospital, the security around us, the response.

I will give credit where it is due, however. The Nigerian police team that investigated this were swift. Within two weeks the attackers had been caught, and they were later arraigned. By then the case was international news, not just another robbery.

Months later, residents were asked to appear in court. Everyone was too afraid. I would not betray Barnabas, so I went. In that courtroom I was infuriated, because they were so young and so small. They were kids of about 20, and the oldest was around 30. The police's own list gives their ages as 20 to 31.

That, mostly, is why I believe this happened. Nigeria is under-policed, and young people have been left to grow up without the basics. The worst of them turn to crimes like this one. Our own estate had not fixed its electric fence, and that kind of neglect is common in Nigeria. Now families have been changed forever.

I wanted to attend Barnabas's burial too, but my father and my uncle tore into me. “Why expose yourself? Why risk your life for people you hardly knew?” I didn't argue. I'm not a coward, and they didn't raise one, but I saw that even these strong men were frightened for me, and I understood.

My mother wanted me out of the country at once. I was already booked to leave a few weeks later, back to where I actually live, abroad. People assumed I was relocating, when in truth I had lived abroad all along and only visited Nigeria from time to time.

I raised money for Barnabas's family. Getting it to his widow was hard, because she was too poor to have a bank account. On a later visit I had her and their son at my house, where I watched the boy drink juice and eat some nice small chops, completely unaware of what lay ahead of him. He is the image of his father. Six years, I thought, and already this. I gave more, because we do what we can. Some days I still think about him.

About a year on, I was contacted by the close family of my neighbour, the woman who died, and not of Barnabas, who was the guard. They said, “Thank you for not using our relative's name for attention.” Many people had pretended to know her, for social media currency, while I had stayed silent and taken the abuse. Some people wanted my head, and some said I was involved, although if I was part of it, why wasn't I shot? I called the family and told them everything.

I sensed they believed the attack was planned. They have a right to their thoughts, and I am not trying to change what they believe, but I know what I saw. I don't believe it was planned. I think it was wrong place, wrong time. I think she was terrified, perhaps more so because she wasn't fully dressed, and that she climbed to the outside of the balcony, hoping to escape if they broke down her door, and slipped. I don't believe she threw herself off, and the balcony itself tells me so.

When the CCTV footage emerged, you could hear that the robbers themselves were shocked. They call to each other, “Hey, come and see. This girl.” In a neighbour's recording she cries, “Somebody help.” Then there is a loud bang, and one of the robbers shouts. A neighbour watching from his own balcony said a robber was telling her not to scream. One of them later confessed that he went up to help her, but he spoke only Hausa and no English.

We will never know exactly what happened, because the one person who could tell us is gone. I don't think she jumped. I think panic caused an accident, perhaps as she tried to get down to the other flat.

She was a beautiful young woman, a model and a news reporter, from a good family, and her parents had to bury her. She had moved home from abroad, from the same country I live in. She was 29, and so was Barnabas.

As we remember her, one year on, remember Barnabas too. I never knew her. Him I saw every day. Remember his energy, his steadfastness, his bravery and his honour, and remember his son and his widow. I have been trying to find the words for this.

Remember, too, the mental health of everyone who was there. My friends demanded that I see a therapist. I did it virtually, and the therapist gave me the go-ahead, a clean bill of health. That is important. The first time I heard fireworks afterwards, I shook, and then I laughed it off. I'm fine, but I checked.

Life has returned to normal. A year after the arraignment, nobody has been sentenced, so we wait. This is life.

I hope they get justice. I hope she gets justice. I hope Barnabas gets justice. I pray that both families find closure.

Six weeks before she died, my neighbour posted a prayer on X. She prayed, from the depth of her heart, that Nigeria “never happens to me or anyone I care about.” Her post was widely shared after that night.

It happened to her, and it happened to Barnabas. My prayer for you, reading this, is the same as hers.

May Nigeria not happen to you.

• 29 Sep 2025Armed robbery at an apartment compound in Katampe, Abuja. Somtochukwu Maduagwu, 29, and security guard Barnabas Danlami die. ThisDay · ARISE News
• 29 Sep, 19:20I post that it happened in my block, and that I will share details when I am ready. X
• 30 Sep, 09:11I reply publicly that the hospital story is untrue. X
• 30 Sep 2025ARISE News management visits her parents in Port Harcourt, and photographs of the visit are published. Users object online. ThisDay, 1 Oct · Legit.ng
• 11 Oct 2025Police parade the suspects at FCT Command headquarters. The ages they give run from 20 to 31. Vanguard
• Oct 2025FCT Police announce the arrest of twelve suspects. TheCable · Premium Times
• 10 Oct 2025A fundraiser for Barnabas's widow and child is reported. Legit.ng
• 22 Jan 2026Eleven defendants are arraigned at the FCT High Court, Jabi, on charges including conspiracy, armed robbery and murder. All plead not guilty. allAfrica
• 10 Feb 2026Trial of eleven defendants opens at the FCT High Court. Court reports name me as the first prosecution witness. Sahara Reporters
• Apr 2026A police witness tells the court how the suspects were traced and arrested. ThisDay · ARISE News
• Sep 2026One year on. No verdict.