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Another
Bar Beach Story in the making
The story of how ocean
surge is fighting one of the most popular beaches in Lagos State Nigeria.
Why is the Atlantic ocean eating up Alpha Beach? This is the prevailing
question at the site of the once-glorious beach where holiday makers
and revelers used to carouse in the sand and children played all kinds
of games on sunny days. For miles on end, the exciting Atlantic waves
would surge and recede without break. But the party seems to be over.
Was it caused by three ships blown to grounding by a storm last year
as some are saying or is this the adverse effect of sand mining by trailing
suction hopper dredgers which have been scooping sand from a location
less than 10 miles away inside the Atlantic Ocean as others argue? These
dredgers were taking the sand to reclaim the site at Bar Beach where
a new city, Eko Atlantic City, is being developed, promoted by the Lagos
State Government and companies allied to the Lebanese businessman, Chagouri
Chagouri.
As one local man, smoking something and lounging on beach chairs with
his friend, told DDH at Alpha Beach grounds in June, “the sea
is now angry”. Another man nearby said the residents saw the ocean
waves coming closer and closer and taking more and more of the beaches
in the past few months but they did not know.
The surging noisy waves were breaking less than 100 metres from where
we stood, grabbing more and more of the upland where shanties and kiosks,
made from this-and-that, used to stand. Most of them are gone now, for
good. A block and concrete one-story hotel building has also been lost
to the waves, along with not less than 300 other small businesses engaged
in the business of creating pleasure for tourists and visitors from
far and near.
A bee-hive of activities in the day time, especially during weekends,
Alpha Beach was a known red-light district where the law preferred to
keep at bay, and where, for that matter, few incidents other than pleasure-seeking,
used to happen. On any good day, local urchins, posing as local government
agents with fake receipts, charged anything from N100 to N500 per visitor,
depending on how exotic one looked, to allow access to the far-flung
inviting beach grounds dotted with tall coconut trees. Once past the
toll points, miles of kiosks, sunshades and large umbrellas of all types
and colours give the area a carnival atmosphere. Petty traders, selling
all that had once been asked of them, run a marketplace that, mixed
with calypso and other music blaring from juke boxes, trades into the
night hours. Seated fun seekers, mostly gaze at the Atlantic and anchored
ships idling in the distance, waiting for berths at Apapa and Tin Can
Island ports were sold as well as the sheds. Or they could watch the
horses which the beach boys gallop for fun and to entice boys who hop
on for quick rides at a fee. There was no scarcity of barbeques in meat,
fish and snails; soups of every variety from various parts of Nigeria;
assorted drinks, cigarettes, cigars. Even banned substances could be
procured… if the right price was paid. In some of the restaurants,
live barracudas, cooked on the spot, was a special treat before the
waves came and put a stop to it.
Ordinarily, fishing is a natural occupation for some of the Ijaw or
Awori residents who used the beach as outlet for their products. Small
crowds would gather and it was a small wonder to see hardy fishermen
piloting their motorized canoes into the beach from the surging waves,
bringing fishes, shrimps, turtles, etc, to a bursting community which
has done business here for longer than anyone around can accurately
tell.
As the population of Lekki peninsula and
Ajah environs increased in the new millennium, Alpha Beach became well
positioned to serve all comers, including expatriates looking to satiate
lusty appetites. But another feature that made the beach popular was
road that offered an escape from the crowded all-important Lekki-Epe
4-lane expressway. Whenever the traffic jams of many miles took over
the lone access in and out of the expensive peninsula, SUVs and even
smaller cars, in single file, would divert to pass through Alpha Beach,
bypassing many bottlenecks on their way home or out, if they overcome
the sandy parts of the undulating thoroughfare.
When DDH visited the beach at the end of June, some of the traders yet
to be visited by the waves were adopting a wait-and-see attitude but
most looked forlorn because they knew it was a matter of time. One of
them told us that the state government officials had given them notice
to vacate the grounds to make way for some remediation but some queried
what anybody can do against such raging oceans?
Lagos has about 180 kilometres of ocean shoreline and if Alpha Beach,
known in local parlance as ijoko agba (the seat of elders), is lost,
it might seem a small fraction of prime land space in a state where
land is seen by the locals as their own “crude oil”. However,
it adds to a series of worrying trends now being seen as a recurring
decimal along the shoreline. In the recent past, another prime estate
situated along the coastline had its heavily reinforced concrete fence
pulled down by the ocean surge. What are the likely immediate or remote
causes of these spates of ocean surges?
A University of Lagos associate professor of surveying and geoinformatics,
Patrick C. Nwilo recommends further research to pinpoint the exact causes
while pointing to the adverse effects of the ships which were beached
by last year’s storm as a likely factor. When asked about the
effects of the development of the new city, he said that existing models
suggested such effects would take place in adjacent environments like
Kuramo waters, for example; and not far off, as in the case of Alpha
Beach, several kilometers away.
His perspective was supported by another surveyor at the Nigerian Institute
of Oceanography and Marine Research who believes the beached vessels
in the vicinity might be the direction to look for the cause of the
misfortune now befalling Alpha Beach. But she stressed that the trend
of happenings along the Nigerian coastline suggests that no one is really
in charge. She urged the federal government to remedy this by creating
an agency that will be responsible for the nation’s coastline.
But another expert hydrographer who did not give permission to use his
name elaborated on what he termed “natural budgeting” of
sand on the ocean floor whereby scooped spoil from the ocean bed, if
more than the naturally allowable limit, has the tendency to pull in
sand from the shoreline to make up for the deficit. He said in advanced
countries this factor was responsible for the regulation of the quantity
of sand allowed to be dredged from the water bodies.
Perhaps the point of which agency was really in charge was demonstrated
when DDH inquired from the Federal Ministry of Environment in Lagos
where one informant who wants to remain anonymous said he had not even
heard of the beach in question. He said he knew only the Bar Beach and
the to-and-fro that took place between Lagos State Government and the
federal government some years ago culminating in the hand-over of Bar
Beach to the former. So that although the informant from NIOMR thought
that the federal government is responsible for looking into the Alpha
Beach situation, her Environment Ministry counterpart said it was not
part of their schedule. Thus, it seems plausible to say that no one
seems to know exactly the agency or ministry whose job it is to take
care of the Atlantic shoreline of Nigeria.
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Is Alpha
Beach another Bar Beach saga in the making?
Alpha Beach in the Lekki
peninsula is gradually being wiped out as you read these lines. The
culprit is the Atlantic Ocean. In the past few weeks, most of the shanties
and shacks that used to serve the hospitality industry are gone; their
owners left without their businesses. Most importantly that pristine
ecosystem has been taken over by the ocean waters and it is now becoming
a nightmare to people who have erected palatial mansions on that waterfront.
What will they do? Read more...
Other Articles &
Interviews
Capt
Adeyemo on River Niger Dredging...NEW
Prof
P.C. Nwilo on his assessment of NIWA during sabbatical ...NEW
Mr
Nseyeng Ebong on his 8-year tenure as rector of Maritime Academy
of Nigeria Oron...NEW
Chief
Dumo Lulu Briggs as
chairman of Maritime Academy of Nigeria Oron, his vision...NEW
Engr
Muyiwa Omasebi: The face-off Between NIWA, MMSD and Lagos State Govt.
Otunba
K Folarin: The Collapse
of Nig. shipping lines.
P.L.
Carrodano: How govt
can revive Nig. shipping lines.
Sam
Epia: The struggles
of Nig shipping lines with cargo reservation scheme.
Jeff
Gibb: Intricacies of
the equipment market in Nigeria.
Environmental
Quality Monitoring.
Environment: "How
many choppers has DPR got?" - Chief Ogunsiji.
Dredging the Niger Delta: Interview of Ben Efekarurhobo.
Role
of Surveying in the Dredging Industry
G.B Liman:
Of Myth, Reality and Resource Control
Dredging
Law: A judgment on the ownership of a sand dredging site by the
Court of Appeal.
Dredging
Law:
a.
Lagos State Attorney General Interpretes state law on sand dredging
and stockpile.
b.
NIWA public notice on Lagos State intervention in inland waterways regulation.
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