‘Take care of the kids’, final words of victim of Afriland fire to her husband over phone
The final words of Kehinde Adeoye, a victim of last week’s devastating fire at Afriland Towers on Broad Street, Lagos Island, have been revealed.
Kehinde Adeoye, 36, a staff member of United Capital Plc, died in the fire with five of her colleagues.
Mother of two, Adeoye, had just returned from three months of maternity leave when the fire incident happened.
A friend of hers, Tife Ogunjimi, in tributes paid to Adeoye on X, said her friend frantically called her husband after she was trapped in a room in the burning building.
She reportedly explained to her husband that the route to escape had been taken by the raging inferno.
According to Ogunjimi, the fire never got to the room where Adeoye was, but the smoke from the inferno killed her.
Ogunjimi revealed that some of the final words of Adeoye to her husband when she started feeling weak from the smoke inhalation were about the children they shared.
According to Ogunjimi, Adeoye told her husband in Yoruba, “Bami toju awon omo yen”. This translates in English as, “Take care of the kids for me”.
She thereafter lost consciousness.
By the time help got to her, she was gone. Efforts to revive her proved abortive. There was said to be no single burn or bruise on her body.
It is believed that the smoke killed more people than the actual fire. Five colleagues of Adeoye died in the incident.
They included Jesutoni Shodipo, 21; Ndidi Osaemedike-Okeke, 41; Olumide Oyefodunrin, 27; Opeyemi Oloyede, 26; and Rebecca Adenuga, 26.
United Capital published a statement listing the six deceased staff and paying tributes to them.
The company said, though the staff members have departed, “the moments we shared remain deeply etched in our hearts.”
The financial company pledged to join their families and friends to celebrate their lives, reflect on their impact, and honour the legacies they left behind.
It would be recalled that the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) also lost four senior staff members in the unfortunate incident.
