The Renevlyn Development Initiative (RDI) has urged the Lagos State Government to stop what it called destructive dredging and sand mining in the Okun Alfa axis of Eti-Osa Local Government Area, warning that the coastal community could be wiped out as the Atlantic Ocean continues to swallow large sections of its land.
The call followed a fact-finding visit by an RDI team, which interacted with residents and assessed the erosion and other pressures threatening the area.
The group said Okun Alfa residents had become victims of the greed of wealthy interests now living in Eko Atlantic, and of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project, which it said has also cut through part of the community.
RDI Executive Director, Philip Jakpor, described the situation in the community as heartbreaking and shocking while asking the government to end harmful activity along the shoreline and to build wave breakers to keep the community from being erased.
“What we found is heartbreaking because the community has been there for hundreds of years. Now, so-called development projects are threatening to erase them without any suitable alternative,” he said.
Jakpor noted that the only modest intervention by the state came under the administration of former governor Babatunde Raji Fashola, when a number of wave breakers were constructed. That relief, he said, proved short lived.
“They only provided temporary relief, according to locals who told our team that the number of breakers is too few to halt the raging Atlantic,” he said.
RDI project officer, Linda Amadi, said women in the community carry a double burden, having lost their livelihoods as fisherfolk while also struggling to secure safe shelter at night.
“Our interaction with the women shows that they sleep with one eye open because they fear the waves will roar. What the government should do is provide temporary shelters for residents in the upland areas to cushion the effect of displacement whenever the ocean incursion happens,” she said.
Amadi also called for empowerment training and access to funding or soft loans for women and other vulnerable groups affected by coastal erosion in the community.
Okun Alfa residents are known for fishing and fish trading. For decades the community has faced rising ocean levels linked to a changing climate, and it has lost more than 1,000 metres of land to the sea.
Residents say the surges have worsened since 2011, a shift they attribute to development projects carried out by the state government in the Eti-Osa and Ibeju-Lekki areas, and more recently to the federal government’s Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project.
