Although Governor Jide Sanwo-Olu tried to jug the memory of Nigerians, almost always fated to forgetfulness, many still would not remember the grass-to-grace story of the Lagos Bar Beach, now turned tony Eko Atlantic City (EAC).
It was at a March 31 event, where the United States Embassy in Nigeria flagged off the construction of its new N223 billion, 10-storey consulate campus, to be built at EAC. When completed in 2027, it would be, according to a report in The Nation, “the largest US Consulate in American history, anywhere in the world.”
Huge. But even huger was the waste the doomed Lagos Bar Beach would have been, but for the cutting-edge thinking of those running Lagos affairs then, even when the Federal Government, under President Olusegun Obasanjo, virtually left Lagos for dead.
The Bar Beach, at its zenith, was well-storied: Nigeria’s prime beach, the very epitome of water fun, splash and pleasure; and a meeting point, of all races in Lagos: African, European, Indian, etc, who couldn’t have enough of the roaring and frothing Atlantic.
And yes: wasn’t it the bastion of the fictive Brother Jero, the rascally but likable Aladura fraud, hero (?) of Wole Soyinka’s twin plays: The Trials of Brother Jero and Jero’s Metamorphosis? Yes: the Bar Beach was home to a racket of white garment priests, in their daily faith drama, well captured for posterity by the Jero plays.
But then, ocean surges soon laid bare the Bar Beach, even threatening the beachfront Ahmadu Bello Way, with its bevy of well-appointed state liaison offices, and allied plum pieces of property in that neighbourhood, including Eko Hotel and Suites.
At its worse season, the press would duly report the panic; and the neighbouring NTA would beam the hysteria to viewers’ home, in sobering technicolor. In response to that, the best antediluvian thinking President Obasanjo and his Works and Housing Minister, the late Chief Tony Anenih, conjured up was award of contracts to a slew of sand-fillers.
But no sooner did those tens of trucks deposit their sand than the surging ocean swept them away! Short-story: the Obasanjo order had absolutely no clue!
Then, enter Governor Bola Tinubu and his band of Lagos innovative thinkers. The result is today’s Eko Atlantic City, which genius of waste-to-wealth the US Embassy just endorsed.
At that event, sitting Governor Sanwo-Olu crowed the crow: eye and living witness of turning “what used to look like a liability into an asset.” He added: “At that time I was also privileged to be in a cabinet that said ‘Not under our watch’ would nature wipe us off the face of the earth.”
Bola Tinubu was governor and thinker-in-chief. That couldn’t be said of you know who: then commander-in-chief in Abuja (who even once proudly bragged that Lagos was a “jungle” in his Abuja lair) and his relay of Bar Beach sand baggers!
The Bar Beach metamorphosis (like Brother Jero’s, by the way), from ugly sandbags to tony EAC, thanks to superb marine engineering, is ode to punishing but cutting-edge thinking.
The latest American endorsement is the latest toast of that. Ideas rule the world, don’t they?