Panic at the Heart of Abuja as Fire Devours Federal Mortgage Bank Headquarters

The sky over Central Abuja turned grey on Saturday afternoon.

From the fourth floor of the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria headquarters, opposite the Central Bank of Nigeria, thick black smoke began to pour out like a warning. Within minutes, the warning became a roar.

Flames licked the windows. Papers flew. Staff on the upper floors scrambled for stairwells as the fire spread, hungrily climbing across the top section of the building.

On the streets below, confusion. Car horns. Shouts. People stopped mid-step and looked up.

“Mortgage Bank of Abuja, opposite CBN, currently on fire,” Facebook user Praises Chukwu wrote in real time, attaching photos of orange flames biting into the building’s roof.

“The fire service team are putting up their best to take it out, but the fire seems to be spreading across the top floor of the building,” he added.

Fire trucks wailed in from different directions. Firefighters uncoiled hoses and aimed jets of water at the inferno, but the blaze had already taken hold.

Smoke billowed upward, staining the Abuja sky and drawing a crowd of onlookers, bank workers, and curious civil servants who abandoned offices to watch.

Inside, the sound was chaos — alarms, breaking glass, footsteps echoing down concrete corridors. Documents, files, and decades of mortgage records sat in the path of the fire. Outside, the fear was the same question on everyone’s lips: _Was anyone trapped?_

As of the time of filing this report, no official casualty figure had been released. The cause of the fire remained unknown. And the full extent of the damage to the headquarters — one of Nigeria’s key housing finance institutions — had yet to be assessed.

For now, the building stands scarred, its upper floors blackened, while firefighters continue the battle to tame what’s left of the flames.

Authorities have not issued an official statement.

[THE PUNCH report rewritten]