Not less than ten communities along the coastal lines of Lagos are facing serious threat of erosion with dire consequences, reports Sunday Oguntola
Every morning, 10-year-old Elijah saunters to the calming, stilling breeze of the ocean beside the window of his thatched apartment. His favourite spot is the tall coconut tree facing the beach. The tree has been his companion since he started the morning routine in the last seven years. He sits under its blowing branches, gazing and lost in a world only accessible to him. He watches as ocean animals show up here and there. Sometimes, he laughs at their queer movements and activities. He frowns most times to register displeasure with certain injustices, even in the animal world.
Elijah spends an average of four hours, completely fixated in his world. Only pangs of hunger tell him most time to leave for other businesses. Reluctantly, he drags his legs back to the one-room apartment after lapping in the comfort only the surging ocean offers his troubled, young mind.
Oceans of troubles
In the last three months, Elijah has been forced to abandon his treasured morning rituals. He sits dejectedly in his ramshackle apartment, watching the ocean blowing away his happiness. “My son has lost his drive for life and enthusiasm. Nothing matters to him again,” Bosede, his mother, shared.
“He is completely lost. It appears what gives me the groove to carry is gone. I cannot explain how and why but my son is taken away. He’s not what he used to be,” the mother, a fish merchant added.
The distraught Elijah has been moody for the three hours our correspondent spent in Barb Wire village off the close to Chevron Estate on the Lekki axis of Lagos State. But he sparked back to life and explained his moodiness.
“I cannot go to the beach side again because my favourite tree has been uprooted. It’s gone forever. I watched one morning as the ocean hit it strongly, sweeping it away with the root. I couldn’t do anything because it happened too soon.
“Why will God allow my coconut tree to go? Why can’t it be there always? Why is my comfort and happiness gone? Why is the only thing that gives me joy in the whole world taken away so rudely and suddenly?” the lad launched away in childish anger mixed with exuberance.
Elijah, one of the 1.5million out-of-school kids in the nation, has derived solace and comfort from the ocean right in his family’s backyard. For years, the ocean was his only source of livelihood and world. There he fished for survival and communed with his innermost being.
But like 4,000 residents of the community, the ocean has become a constant source of troubles in the last one year. In the last three months ago, the community has lost 250 metres of its costal lines to the ocean. The massive surge has been sweeping away everything in sight, including palm trees and the soil.
The coastal erosion has left in its trails a pattern of destruction, wreckage and fears. “Our life is never the same again. Every morning, we wake up to another round of destruction and erosion. Inch by inch, the ocean is tearing closer to us, leaving us afraid and scared of our existence,” Tunde Apese, a youth leader in the community, told our correspondent.
Harvests of wreckage
Situated less than 1,500 metres from the multi-billion Eko Atlantic City, popularly known as New Lagos, Barb Wire village has been living in the precipice in the last one year. The residents arrived 12 years ago following eviction from Apese village close to Bar Beach Tower Apapa.
The rising sea level forced government to evacuate the entire Apese village in calculated moves to avoid human disasters. Since then the community has become more or less on the move, migrating from one allocated area to the other. The migrant community arrived the current abode, which is its fifth, some nine years ago.
Living was initially interesting until the ravaging ocean surge a little over a year ago occasioned by constant climate change according to experts and stakeholders. Despite the absence of school, primary health centre, drug store, toilet, electricity or pipe borne water, the residents lived happily with nature.
Vanishing coconut trees
But the friendly nature has turned to a rabid foe, making living hellish for the community of artisans and casual workers. Right before their eyes, shorelines are vanishing with lands claimed by the hostile ocean surge.
“When we arrived here, the beach was very far away. There were almost thousand of coconut trees with massive sands. We could fish easily and this place was more or less a tourist attraction. But we are now very scared of the ocean. It has been uprooting everything we used to know and enjoy,” Apese, popularly called Coach, shared.
Our correspondent observed there were less than 50 coconut trees standing in the community’s shorelines. Of the 50, more than 20 have their roots openly battered. Many more were bending or shaking precariously to ocean waves. Many trees were seen buried as long as five feet below earth surface, only showing when waves sweep along.
Submerged buildings
“These coconut trees are not there by accident. They are planted naturally to mitigate against ocean surge with their strong, firm roots. They are also to provide shade for the sand underneath and offer support for the ecosystem,” says Dr Israel James, an environmental activist.
“That they are giving way despite their strong roots is a clear indication this battle against coastal erosion has not even started. If the waves can sweep away the trees with their roots imagine what will happen if houses were around,” he added.
But houses have been getting submerged in the community for years. “I can count over 20 buildings that have gone in the last one year. You just discover they cave in to ocean blasts with the occupants barely escaping,” Yinka, another youth in the community shared. Wood supported by a little concrete serve as houses for residents. The N1, 500-N2, 000 monthly rents is tough even for the richest residents to pay.
Ocean erosion explained
According to experts, ocean erosion, according to the encyclopaedia “is the wearing away of land and the removal of beach or dune sediments by wave, tidal current, wave currents, drainage or high winds.”
President of the Lekki Urban Forest Animal Sanctuary (LUFASI), Desmond Majekodunmi, described it as “the distortion of life support system in coastal areas owing to human activities and rapid climate change.”
As it is in Barb Wire Village, so it is in Lakofagi, Owonikoko, Okun Aja, Okun Mopo Nla, Mopo and several other communities along the Lagos costal lines. Residents live in perpetual fear of tidal currents that used to offer them succour and luxury some years ago.
Fire on the mountain
According to Dr. Isaac Ayodele, Lagos has never been at direr threat of ocean erosion. “There is now a sea level rise of 4.9 feet (1.5 meters) above normal within two days in 2006, making Lagos one of the megacities most vulnerable to sea level rise.
Ayodele, who holds a PhD. D.sc degree in Public Health from Atlantic International University, Honolulu, Hawaii, United States with specialisation in confronting global climate change, observed, “It is being analysed that a permanent sea level rise of only 7.8 inches (200 millimetres) might create 740, 000 homeless people in Nigeria. 2010 Survey says 3.2 feet (1meter) sea level rise on Nigerian coast would affect about 900,000 people and 375 Square miles (973 Square Kilometres) of coastal land.”
The Lagos State government has initiated the Eko Atlantic City with a 6.5 kilometres sea barrier. It is described as the great wall of Lagos conceived to withstand the strongest storm imaginable, at least in a thousand years. The plan is to return the coast to what it used to be in the 50s and 60s.
While the initiative has surely helped to hold back the shorelines, many communities are feeling impacts of the tidal currents at the other end. This, according to Miss Rose Ozo, an environmentalist, is because the federal government has abandoned the drilling of pipes to wade off the currents close to Barb wire village.
By abandoning the project, she said: “The waves have found alternative pathways that have battered the community in no small measure. Everyone is living in absolute fear because the ocean keeps getting closer and closer menacingly.”
So little, yet much
Ozo is a resident representative of a public-private initiative to protect the shorelines from constant erosion. She leads a team of local volunteers to mount physical barriers against the tidal waves. Two weeks ago when our correspondent visited, not less than 11,000 sandbags, each measuring 100kg, have been filled with sands and erected to serve as barriers in the community.
Three months ago, that measure was good enough to keep the tides at reasonable distance. The villagers were overjoyed by the remarkable results. They supported the project and invested their energies in it. Their joy has been short-lived however. The waves have gone stronger with increased velocity these days.
The rescue mission has moved on to spreading nets to peg down the sandbags from the venomous tides. For now, the measure is working to wide acclaim. The oceans are being protected from making further incursion to the village with the tedious intervention.
Beyond threats of coastal erosion
For now, the ocean erosion is the biggest pressing threat to the villagers. Our correspondent observed the residents were not in the least fazed by the gross absence of infrastructure in their midst. Though there are big electrical poles on the main road leading to the village, the entire community has been in perpetual darkness.
In fact, there are no wires or electrical poles within the community. More than 80 percent of the villagers cannot afford generating sets, meaning they are permanently cut off from power supply.
Deplorable sanitation
If power is considered a little challenge, sanitation remains a huge threat in the community. Our correspondent observed the villagers defecate openly owing to absence of toilet amenities. Guests cannot but hold their nostrils tightly to beat off sickening odour from defecations. Young and old indulge in open defecations as well as urination. The foul smell is as nauseating as offensive. The foul smell is not as bad as the legion of flies, dangerously peeping at residents and guests to the village.
Out-of-school kids
Of the 4,000 estimated villagers, over 50 percent is below ages 1-5. The reproductive machines in the village are working at full throttles, ostensibly because men and women have not much to do all day. “Once there are no manual works to do, people just lazy around. They have no skills as such to do anything, except that a few of them are artisans without much patronage,” Ozo informed.
At an average of five new births every month, most of the children are practically born into raw poverty and lack. Their parents can barely feed, let alone educate them. Our correspondent observed some of them walking utterly naked despite the breeze around them.
Less than 10 percent of the kids from the community get to attend primary school. The nearest public institution is Igbo Efon Primary School in Lekki. To be able to attend, they have to trek for almost an hour from the community to the highway. But there is another obstacle: They have to cross the expansive expressway before undertaking another trek to the school.
“Those who get to the school are the very fortunate ones. Otherwise we just ask them to stay at home and do whatever they can find to do,” Zaccheaus, a resident, shared.
Elusive potable water
Water, they say, is life. But not so for these distressed villagers. Only two wells provide drinking water for the community. But the water is certainly not potable. For a coastal community with low sea level, only borehole masterfully dug will suffice.
The absence of governmental attention and wherewithal mean the wells are far from ideal. To worsen matters, the villager cannot even afford sachet water, leaving them with the unenviable option of drinking only well water.
Despite the avowed immunity of villagers, many of them, our correspondent observed were looking far less than healthy. The children were worse, showing serious signs of malnutrition and water-borne diseases.
There is no single Primary Health Centre to serve the community too. During childbirths, women are said to be taken on bikes to medical facilities miles away. To get drugs requires similar stress.
Playing with fire
But all of these infrastructural issues are nothing considered to the threat of coastal erosion. That is clearly the biggest threat to their existence. Majekodunmi believes government must do more to tackle the coastal fury in the coastlines.
“We are literally playing with fire. We are talking about windstorms that can sweep away an entire city if not checked. The earlier we check the situation, the better for us all because we are really facing a serious threat,” he stated.
The village may not have heard or read about Kwesi Brew’s poem The Eats Our Land , but what is happening to them is exactly what the poet wrote about in the 80s.
