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Ibaji fire, 17 January 2022 Ibaji

Out · last detection 25 Jan 2022, 12:41 UTC

The fire started on 17 January 2022 in Ibaji, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,747 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 9th largest in Kogi since 2016 (of 48 with a page). Number 28 in Nigeria in 2022, of 125.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Uzo-Uwani · 2022Igalamela-Odolu · 2016Anambra West · 2026

Burnt area
3,747ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
17 Jan 2022 – 24 Jan 2022
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
17 Jan
2022
Heat detections
204
in a single hotspot: 48 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
158MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Jan24 Jan
25 Jan 2022

How it evolved, day by day

17 Jan 2022 · 4 MW · 3 19 Jan 2022 · 266 MW · 42 20 Jan 2022 · 498 MW · 38 21 Jan 2022 · 41 MW · 14 22 Jan 2022 · 197 MW · 33 23 Jan 2022 · 63 MW · 11 24 Jan 2022 · 120 MW · 14 25 Jan 2022 · 72 MW · 9
17 Jan 20 Jan 22 Jan 24 Jan

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

37°high
34km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 58 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

38% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,409 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.4% of the area of London (37 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Ibaji where it started
    3,772 ha reached on 12 Jan
    2.8 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area1.2 ha
Residents≈ 500

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.2 hectares of built-up land and about 500 residents (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
17 Jan 34.8 °C 33 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
18 Jan 32.9 °C 27 % 27 km/h 2.3 mm Moderate 17
19 Jan 35.1 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
20 Jan 36.4 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
21 Jan 36.0 °C 16 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
22 Jan 36.4 °C 14 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
23 Jan 35.3 °C 21 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
24 Jan 36.7 °C 11 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
25 Jan after 36.5 °C 14 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Jan after 37.1 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
27 Jan after 36.5 °C 11 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
28 Jan after 36.8 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
29 Jan after 37.3 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
30 Jan after 37.1 °C 10 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
31 Jan after 37.9 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
1 Feb after 35.4 °C 10 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
2 Feb after 36.9 °C 10 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
3 Feb after 35.3 °C 26 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 10 Jan 2022
After · 31 Jan 2022

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 204Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Nigeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ibaji fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 January 2022 and 24 January 2022: 8 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,747 hectares (37.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ibaji (3,772 ha, 2.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.7 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Nigeria (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Emergency number: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 204 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.