A 27-year-old woman, Aisha Maikudi Ibrahim, tragically died after her car somersaulted and plunged into the Lagos Lagoon from the Third Mainland Bridge.
Aisha, a vendor from Gbagada, was returning from an event in Ikoyi when the fatal accident occurred on Saturday, August 24, 2025.
She had called her mother around 1 a.m. to say she would be home in 20 minutes, but by 2 a.m., her phone was unreachable.
The family discovered the accident scene around 6 a.m. when they saw emergency officials and bystanders gathered near the bridge.
The car’s bumper was visible, and the plate number confirmed it was hers. Despite the presence of LASTMA officials and marine police, they failed to initiate a timely rescue. Instead, local divers were eventually called in, but they demanded N400,000 before retrieving Aisha’s body from the lagoon, nearly 12 hours after the accident.
Aisha’s aunt, Hadiza Oyewumi, described her niece as “a promising entrepreneur with high aspirations” and lamented the “commercialisation of human lives” in the failed rescue effort. Oyewumi urged the Lagos State Government to properly equip emergency responders and integrate trained divers into official rescue operations to prevent such tragedies in the future.
The incident has sparked outrage, with many questioning the efficiency of the emergency response system in Lagos.
Spark News Naija reports that Aisha’s body was recovered between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. on Saturday and was buried immediately according to Islamic rites.