The Lagos State Police Command has concluded that the explosion which rattled Way Street in the Oke-Moshi area on Tuesday was not the work of a bomb. The Commissioner of Police in Lagos State, Tijani Fatai, told reporters at the command headquarters in Ikeja that a detailed forensic review had established the blast as an accidental, mechanical event rather than a deliberate attack.
According to the commissioner, the investigation was carried out by the Nigeria Police Force Explosive Ordnance Disposal team together with the Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Unit. The technical examination of the scene turned up no traces of explosive material, no detonators, no initiation system and no explosive residues, none of the signatures that investigators would ordinarily expect to find after a bombing.
Instead, the police said the incident resulted from a catastrophic failure of a pressurised mechanical component located outside the vehicle involved. That failure generated a sudden release of energy which caused the shattering of the vehicle, producing what the command described as a mechanical explosion rather than a detonation triggered by any device.
Fatai was emphatic in ruling out the more alarming possibilities that had circulated after the blast. He stated that the investigation had conclusively established that the incident was not caused by an improvised explosive device, nor by terrorist activity, sabotage or any form of criminal use of explosives, removing the spectre of a planned attack in the densely populated part of the city.
The findings matter for a metropolis that has been on edge over security, and the commissioner used the briefing to reassure the public. He told the good people of Lagos State, and Nigerians at large, that they were safe, while encouraging residents to remain vigilant and to keep reporting suspicious activity through the established security channels available to them.
The clarification draws a line under days of speculation that followed the Tuesday morning explosion on Way Street. By tracing the cause to a mechanical fault rather than a hidden bomb, the command sought to calm fears of a wider threat, even as it pressed residents not to let down their guard in reporting anything unusual to the authorities.