08 Dec Federal Fire Service, TEF to train 7,400 Nigerians in community fire preparedness
- Federal Fire Service and Tony Elumelu Foundation will train 7,400 Nigerians on fire safety preparedness nationwide
- The programme will train 200 people in each state and the FCT, focusing on prevention, early warning and basic emergency response
- Trained participants will act as community fire safety advocates, supporting a shift towards more preventive fire risk management
Nigeria’s Federal Fire Service (FFS) has unveiled a national fire safety preparedness programme that will train 7,400 Nigerians under a new partnership with the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF), marking one of the country’s largest coordinated community fire risk initiatives to date. The collaboration was formalised during a high-level meeting between the Controller General of the FFS, Samuel Adeyemi Olumode, and Tony O Elumelu, Founder of TEF and Chairman of Heirs Holdings and the United Bank for Africa, in Abuja.
Under the agreement, the FFS will train 200 people in each of Nigeria’s 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, reaching a total of 7,400 beneficiaries. The curriculum will focus on core fire-prevention skills, early warning practices and basic emergency response procedures, with participants expected to act as fire safety advocates in their communities to help spread awareness and encourage safer practices at household and market level.
As part of the broader collaboration with the Tony Elumelu business ecosystem, FFS personnel will also be deployed across key infrastructures within Mr Elumelu’s portfolio nationwide, where they will serve as safety officers to support compliance, monitoring and fire prevention awareness. During the Abuja engagement, the Service also invested Peter Ashade, Group CEO of United Capital Plc, as a National Fire Safety Ambassador in recognition of the Heirs Group’s contributions to safety awareness and community-focused initiatives.
FFS leadership has described the partnership as a milestone in Nigeria’s move towards a more preventive approach to fire management, complementing traditional response operations with targeted public education and grassroots engagement. For fire and life safety professionals across Africa, the initiative offers a concrete example of how collaboration between public fire services and private or philanthropic institutions can scale community preparedness, strengthen first-response capacity and support a longer-term culture of fire safety in rapidly urbanising environments.
This story was enhanced with AI, with the oversight of a human editor.
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