Samson Ajibade (not his real name) and his colleagues sat at one of the entrances to the wide concrete embankment on the Lagos Bar Beach on Ahmadu Bello Way, Victoria Island to collect N200 toll from picnickers. With his huge frame, he looks menacing. Many picnickers paid the toll without complaints. Some didn’t, but it was not to his hearing.
Armed with an identity card purportedly issued by the Lagos State government, Ajibade, who is in his 30s, told a reveller: “Except you are bigger than the government, that is when you would be exempted from paying the toll; do you think we put ourselves here?” The reveller was not there for sight seeing, he had come to have his lunch at an eatery near the Eko Atlantic City sales office and showroom.
There are others like him on the oldest Lagos Beach, who have made it their ‘cash cow’; feeding fat on unsuspecting visitors, by purportedly collecting tolls from them in the name of generating revenue for the Eti-Osa Local Government. They hide inside the 3.6 tonnes X shaped blocks to perpetrate their act. Their presence raises nostalgic feelings about the beach, which was the haven of fun seekers and revellers, especially during holidays and festivities. But neglect and frequent surges have made the beach a pain in the neck for residents of Victoria Island and motorists plying the Ahmadu Bello Way.
Offices and homes are flooded when the ocean overflows its banks. A portion of Ahmadu Bello Way becomes impassable. Adjoining streets, such as Bishop Oluwole, Tiamiyu Savage, Adetokunbo Ademola, Oju Olobun, Ologun Agbaje and others are not spared.
In 2005, when another surge occurred, the Bola Tinubu administration got the nod of the Federal Government to find a lasting solution to the problem. An extensive survey of severely affected areas showed places adjacent to the west of the Abia State Liason office on Ahmadu Bello Way, where the width of the beach was less than three metres. Shoreline protection, according to the Lagos State Government, was the best option. A Dutch shoreline protection firm, Hitech Group, was hired for the job.
The project comprised the construction of shoreline protection of 1,000 metres length to start at a point to the west of Abia State Liaison office up to the defunct IMB Bank building. The design, according to the government, would use layers of rock placed on a geo-textile sheet with pre-cast concrete elements placed on the beach front, as the primary protection. The ‘x-blocks’ weighing 3.6 tonnes each, were designed to form an interlocking barrier to incoming waves. The sizes of the blocks, according to officials, were determined by computer simulation to withstand the worst predictable storm conditions within a 100-year period.
“The restoration and stabilisation of the Bar Beach project was divided into two phases; Phase one of the project was awarded for N4.072 billion, while the Phase II contract was awarded for N2.259 billion,” the government said.
The unprecedented success recorded at the waterfront protection made the Lagos State government to try reclaiming ‘lost lands’ in the last 100 years, which are estimated at about nine million square kilometres. This brought about the sealing of a multibillion-dollar concession deal in July 2006 with another foreign firm, South Energyx Nigeria Limited (SENL), to build a 21st century city, Atlantic City, meant to serve as the strategic business hub for the sub-Saharan Africa. Years back, the Federal Government tried many unsuccessful projects to check the over-flow of the beach without any success. It was alleged to be a sort of cash-cow for successive ministers. During the tenure of Alhaji Lateef Jakande as the Minister of Works and Housing, the government gave out a contract for dropping of sand bags on the shore to check the angry wave at the beach, but they were all washed away at the slightest surge. The value of real estate on Ahmadu Bello Way during this period dropped, which was hitherto a prime real estate axis that had most of the states’ liaison offices. But now the axis is having its groove back as the state government with recent developments on the beach seem to have found a permanent solution to the problem.
The Bar Beach, according to those who know its history, is a beach with a natural bar. Rev Brother Steve Lucas of the Dominican Order of the Catholic Church, who lived on the Takwa Bay, adjacent to the beach, for 40 years, said the Bar Beach got its name from the bars it had in the past. “Because of those natural bars, no ship could berth at that beach. Each time any ship attempted it, it would crash as it would have run into a natural bar at the beach. This made the government to dredge it then, but that did not help much as there were other areas on Lagos coastline converted to ports,” the 80-year-old American Reverend Brother said.
This natural bar, Rev. Brother Lucas said, might have accounted for the seeming neglect it suffered which invariably made it susceptible to erosion from the Atlantic Ocean. “Surges are natural occurrences, they happen when the ocean tide is high. We experience it often here and there is no human cause for it; it’s a natural phenomenon,” he said.
The cleric would not support those who said the sand filling of the Atlantic City could have caused the flooding of some beaches in Lagos last year.
As the raining season approaches, visitors to the beach have, however, noted that the embankment and the shoreline extension, though effective, may not last if periodic maintenance is not carried out. There are fears that activities of touts and miscreants may undo whatever good work was executed by the government.
“My fear actually is that the beach may be no more. This reason is simple; the territorial reclamation of the government as it were, may phase it out. I’m talking about the Atlantic City, which I sense may swallow the beach later on,” said Akinwale Thomas, a property consultant who was at the Atlantic City showroom for a business transaction.
The beach, according to him, has suffered seriously from the government’s neglect and various abuses from people who visited it for diverse purposes. “Is it the abuse from the so-called spiritualists, who have turned it to their churches you want to talk about, or the street urchins and miscreants who have made it their den?” he asked.
But, in a statement, Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola (SAN) said the state has made inroads into checking the ocean surge. He recalled that the solution embarked upon then by the government at the centre was to pump sand every two years, which was costing the nation between N3 and N4 billion.
He said each time the sand was pumped, the sea just came and washed it away. He explained that when the Kuramo incident happened, the wave was as high as seven metres, stressing that the waves that hit Kuramo were possible because there was no protection for it.
The governor said what his administration has done is to build a defence wall in the sea after reclaiming what the sea washed away.
He said some of the projects the state government has embarked upon in the last three years was the clearing of the Itirin Canal, which has saved the state from greater calamity.
He said: “I am happy we had to remove a property that was blocking the Itirin Canal then and it even became an issue during the last governorship election campaign because it’s the Itirin Canal that leads to Kuramo and down to the Five Cowries Creeks.”
Elaborating other measures taken by the state, the governor explained: “If you go to the Mobil House on the Lekki-Epe Expressway, what that road has done for us is to improve our coastal drainage system. Before now, there was only one the engineers refer to as box culvert at the Mobil House, which links Itirin Canal into the Five Cowries Creek. We undertook a project to expand it to four. That expansion allowed free passage of water from the Atlantic to discharge into the lagoon – thereby checking the coastal surge from the bar beach.”
