OUR DISAPPEARING AND APPEARING LANDSCAPE

The landscape around us, especially on the Lagos Island is a daily disappearing and transforming event. The land along the Alpha beach and Eleko beach area is disappearing at an alarming rate. A colleague, who used to jog along the beach at Alpha beach six months ago, says that stretch of beach has now vanished. The waves from the ocean are hitting the barriers that separated the beach from the residential areas and now flooding the roads in that area. This is a hidden growing environmental disaster that no one is talking about. Let us for a minute forget the ocean erosion, let us examine the rate at which land is being sand filled and developed. The Lagoon along Osborne/Third Mainland bridge area has almost fully disappeared over the last ten years. Estates like Osborne Foreshore 1 and 2 have sprung up and more developments are planned further along the Lagoon shores.  In high end areas like Ikoyi, Parkview and Banana Island, you will find so much land reclamation going on and luxury developments springing up. The once famous Ikoyi Park is gone, giving rise to Parkview Estate. Banana Island came out of the sea and now provides homes for some of the wealthiest Nigerians and multinational companies. On Banana Island you will find Ocean Parade Apartments which is one of the most expensive pieces of real estate anywhere in the world. Apartments here can go for N200 million, which is almost $1.5million.  Not many people can afford to spend this amount on a property, yet the apartments are being snapped up quite quickly both for private us and as investment, of course it provides everything from central air conditioning, gyms, tennis and squash courts and swimming pool.  If you travel to Victoria Island’s Bar Beach Road, you will notice that the Beach has disappeared and will be giving way to mega luxury high rises in the next few years. In Oniru Estate which was previously a poor wasteland called Maroko where the people living in shacks were driven out, the land was sand filled further and is now sold for about N150 million per plot. Further along the Lekki Axis, you find that both sides of the Expressway are being rapidly filled up with new estates and businesses and giving rise to new areas springing out of the Lagoon and bush. Some of these areas were well known fishing and hunting grounds for hunters and villagers until a few years ago when developers started offering millions of naira for plots in the lagoon! Ten years ago you could buy a plot of land in Elegushi, Osapa, Agungi and Chevron for less than N500k, today those same plots for between N40-N100m. Just two years ago, you could buy a plot for N15million in these areas. No one is interested in building single homes on these over inflated priced lots of land. The areas are full of apartments, high rises, townhouses and quadruplexes with no gardens and almost no parking spaces inside the compounds. One thing that is obvious about all these new developments is that they are all sited behind high fences, high gates, electric barbed wire and all manner of security measures. Residents now demand tight security in their homes. You find estates within estates and self contained estates where power, clean running water, paved roads, manned security and other services provided. There is hardly any need now for residents to go outside their estates apart from for work or visiting. The whole environment has changed and is still changing beyond recognition