Shorelines: Only extension of groin construction to Escravos can save Lagos—NCF
The Director General of Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF), Dr Muhtari Aminu-Kano has raised fresh alarm that a substantial part of Lagos State starting from shoreline communities will be submerged by 2050 if nothing is done to tame the surging coastline erosion.
This is as more than 200 residents of Ayetoro community in Ilaje Local Government of Ondo State were at the weekend displaced by the surge from Atlantic Ocean.
Explaining more at a conference recently on the dangers of a fast eastward ocean current eating up several meters of land daily on the Lekki and Victoria Island axis, Dr Aminu-Kano called on the Federal Government to save Lagos State from being wiped out by coastline erosion.
NCF, Dr Muhtari Aminu-Kano, appealed to the Lagos State Government and the Federal government to protect the shorelines as far as the Escravos to avert disaster.
“The immediate solution is for Lagos to take the groins construction all the way to Escravos.
“We are appealing to the managers of the ecological funds to look in the area of these shorelines in Lagos,” he said.
Earlier in his keynote address, NCF’s chairman, Chief Ede Dafinone, said, “Several Lagos coastal communities have been washed away and if nothing is done, the Lagos Island will be underwater by 2030 and the whole of Lagos by 2050.”
He said the problem of coastline erosion in Lagos started during the colonial era when moulds were created to protect the Apapa-Wharf.
Dafinone noted that the impact caused a backlash on the Lekki axis causing an overflow of the Bar Beach, Dafinone said that the Eko Atlantic City Project later protected the Bar Beach forcing the problem further downstream.
While stressing that the Lagos State Government who had began the construction of groins around the Eko Atlantic City and Bar Beach towards Elegushi Beach to solve the problem, he observed that the state government may have suspended the scheme due to the exorbitant cost of each groin put at billons of naira.
He noted that the state government had taken the initiative to erect over 15 groins that effectively protected and replenished the coast for up to 14 kilometres.
“It costs about a billion naira to construct one groin and Lagos States Government’s inability to continue the project in the last 18 months suggested that they were overwhelmed by the problem,” Dafinone observed.
