The Extraordinary Story of How Great Nkor Survived a House Fire

Great Nkor, held by his father, Bethel Nkor.

It was around 11 pm in 2003 when Bethel Nkor returned home from a church service. He was carrying a keg filled with fuel when he met his newborn, Great Nkor, who was 1 year and a few months old at the time, in the hands of a lady cradling him to sleep. Great was struggling to sleep, and as a loving father, usually, the kids fell asleep whenever he placed them on his chest. So he would take Great from the lady holding him, but he needed to change because he was still in his pastoral outfit. He went inside to change his clothes to return later and carry Great.

While he was changing his clothes, the power went out, and he knew someone would immediately rise to turn on the generator. It was a family house, and anyone could take up the responsibility. From the room, Bethel stretched his head out to the corridor and announced to whoever was going to power the generator that he had dropped a keg filled with petrol beside the generator. “So be careful o,” he announced, and just as he was about to return to his undressing, he saw flames of fire coming out of a room.

Still naked, Bethel ran towards the room. “My thoughts were, Great, and the other kids were all still downstairs, there was no business for them there to be doing.” He wasn’t expecting any child to be there, but he met a boy, Joshua, who was sleeping and was trying to escape the fire by running into a wardrobe. He jumped in and saved the boy. After saving Joshua, the lady who was previously holding Great Nkor kept jumping and shouting and crying. “Who else is there? Is there someone else there?” Bethel was asking.

The lady pointed into the room, and at the far end, Great Nkor was sitting inside the fire. “My fire training kicked in, because I worked in the factory. So I lay down and looked intently because the smoke had filled the room. I saw Great at the end of the room; the mattress was burning, and the curtains were burning, dripping over him.” Bethel, still naked, jumped inside the fire to grab his child.

“As I held his leg, his skin peeled because it had burnt and become soft. I had to put my hand under his buttocks, tilt his head backwards, and start running with him down the staircase. I was just running, stark naked, just shouting, “Give me the car key, give me the car key.” I just wanted to get him to the hospital. They had to go bring clothes that were hanging because I was just shouting.”

That was the beginning of what would go on to change and define the dynamic structure of Bethel Nkor’s family. After taking Great Nkor to the children’s hospital in Surulere, he drove to the Nigerian Ports Authority Hospital at midnight to bring another doctor to assist the doctors at the children’s hospital. Days later, Bethel and his wife began raising money for surgeries and treatments. Great Nkor, now 26 years old, would go on to undergo seventeen plastic surgeries in South Africa, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, and other countries. But it was difficult to raise money because everywhere Bethel and his wife went to source money, they were blamed for being careless with a one-year-old child. “What were you doing? Why were you so careless?”

Great Nkor with his family, after the burn.

Great Nkor with his family, before the burn.

When skin is exposed to intense heat or flame, the body’s immediate response is pain as the heat damages the layers of the skin. Depending on the severity of the burn, the skin may become reddened, blistered or charred. As the injury worsens, fluid loss begins, swelling develops and the damaged skin can no longer serve its normal function as a protective barrier. In severe burns, some nerve endings may be destroyed, leading to numbness in certain areas even while the surrounding tissue remains intensely painful. The body’s immune and inflammatory responses are triggered almost immediately, and extensive burns can impact not only the skin but also muscles, blood vessels and internal organs.

Bethel was earning six thousand naira, and his wife, who was working at the bank, was earning somewhat higher. They were taking care of Great with their thin salaries, which weren’t enough. A doctor once confronted them about why they were taking Great around for money, and that upset Bethel. “Do you think I want my son to go through all this and then use him now to raise money? I’m a father, and we are trying to make sure that he gets the best,” Bethel said with anger obvious in his voice.

Grear Nkor, before the burn.

A while after, someone took Great’s story to MTN, and the telecommunication company offered to help. MTN paid for most of the plastic surgeries, including sponsoring his surgeries in South Africa and making him an ambassador. When the international surgeries began to happen, Great’s mom had to leave her job at the bank to accompany him on his travels. Apart from the obvious charring and scars on his skin, Great’s hands and fingers turned backwards, and he could only hold things like a pencil or pen with his thumbs. He could not stand properly until his tendon was flexed and released.

Great Nkor, now.

When it was time for Great Nkor to start school, the first school rejected him because the school said he “would scare off other children.” He was able to start school when a different school showed great interest in him. While in school, Great’s parents continued to outsource finances so he could undergo treatments and surgeries during breaks. They did not want to disrupt the flow of his education or make him miss out on school. One day, in the struggle of raising money for Great’s treatment, someone who owned an NGO reached out to Bethel and his wife to help. They would later learn that the person wanted to take advantage of Great to raise money for herself.

Great Nkor in his school uniform.

“It’s one of the challenges we went through. How many do I want to share? There was even one of my wife’s colleagues, before she left the job, who said to her that if she were Great’s mother, she would have just poisoned the child, and let the child die so that she could live. My wife came back crying. These are things that we couldn’t tell Great when he was young,” Bethel said.

In Great’s childhood, Bethel and his wife were intentional about how they wanted Great to meet himself in the future. They found a photographer who began documenting Great’s progress and journey. They knew a day would come when Great would be curious to learn how his skin became burnt, and they wanted to be prepared. When MTN had Great as a brand face, a few newspapers featured him, including the Guardian and the Sun. The photographs, together with the clippings from the newspapers, were kept for when he’s old enough.

Great Nkor, at work.

“I mean, see Great today. See him today,” Bethel said. He finished his primary school at Evron Nursery Primary School, Surulere and his secondary at Gloryland International College, where he was in the top grade until he had to leave for one of his surgeries. When he came back, he believed he had missed so much, so he joined another school. He studied Industrial Design at Federal University of Technology, Akure, and graduated in 2021. He currently works at a bank and went viral on Instagram for self-challenging himself to earn $30,000 a month as a UGC creator. The post currently has over 950 thousand views, over 100 thousand likes and over 3 thousand comments.

Great Nkor became aware of his burn in primary school. “I have never really had like a moment where I was not aware. There were times when I had to be reserved because, as a child, if they didn’t want to play with me, there was nothing I could do. So I think I’ve always been conscious since primary school. I think university was basically what opened my eyes. I was like, well, people have eyes, they’re going to see, people have mouths, they’re going to talk, life goes on. That was the mentality I’ve had ever since,” Great told me.

According to a 2023 study published by the Nigerian Journal of Clinical Practice, burn injuries account for 4.8% of trauma deaths in Nigeria, leading to approximately 20,000 deaths each year. 44% of the patients in this study were children aged 10 years and younger. The most common cause of injury among these children was scalding from hot liquids, while among all burn victims, flame burns, like Great’s, were the most prevalent cause. One of the prevailing challenges is that most burn survivors face the lack of access to specialised care, infection control and timely treatment.

As Bethel reflected on Great’s journey, he’s appreciative of how he and his wife were intentional about Great’s progress and survival. After Great’s hands were straightened, he started playing drums in church and went on to become the second best in a drum competition in Akure, where they were living before moving to Lagos.

“Of all of us in the family, Great is the only one with perfect eyesight; every one of us wears glasses,” Bethel said. When Great was in South Africa for one of his surgeries with his mum, he saw a group of people staring, and he walked up to them to narrate how everything happened to him. “That’s how I am. I believe there’s a reason why you’re still alive, and there’s a reason you’re still where you are. God’s not done,” Great told me.

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