Lagos Islands – The New Atlantis

This is the story of the flooding problem in Lagos, so naturally, I have to start with talking about designing native Nigerian attire! There is a story trajectory here, I promise, so please stick with me!

Traditional attire in Nigeria (‘natives’)

Not just in Africa, but many developing countries around the world, there are three ways of dressing – global casual, global business, and traditional/cultural dress, or as in Nigeria, a ‘native’.

I first became more sensitized to the business dynamic of this around the mid-late 2000’s in a company with 200+ office staff. They had a ‘dress down’ Friday culture and on Friday most of the Nigerians would come to work in native while the small number of foreigners would generally turn up in jeans and a tee shirt. I had taken up this job having left a job in UK. The UK job led to cultural events from time to time, and I already had about five natives but hadn’t ‘rocked’ them for a while, so from about the third Friday at work in Lagos, I started wearing native to work. I like them because in warm climbs they have a way of cooling you down. If I was a processor, they would be a passive heat sink. Much to the general bemusement of other foreigners, my new Friday attire met with rapturous approval by Nigerian staff (by far the majority).

This then got followed by some ‘me too’ efforts from some other foreigners. The one thing about bad taste and things that don’t work, is that ‘all wrong’ just looks ‘all wrong’ regardless of technically meeting a dress code. The result of these efforts were often this one token native that was the product of a wedding or event at some stage and looked like it had been mothballed for centuries. Some were very cheap quality cloth, ‘ankara’ with ‘riot’ colour that will blind your eyes unless you have some very dark shades. Makes a Nigerian look extra ajepako. Makes an oyibo look like a walking disaster.

My sensitivity around these issues was important, because Friday, or no Friday, my leadership position held a mixture of Technical, Shared Services and Business Development functions, and without warning, I could end up fronting a team on a visit to a client site at no notice. To represent my employer well, I had to understand the context I was visiting and I had to strike the right chord.

Tailors

Just like someone can wear a business suit and tie that just doesn’t look right, so too, in context, a certain style of native might not look right. This seemed to be lost on the other foreigners who worked there, and for them, a native was a native period.

If a certain style or design notion is required, understanding the craft personality as much as the technical skillset of the tailor you use is important. I invested in seeking out many tailors and examining examples of their work.

Finally I settled with mostly three different tailors. One was a woman with a kiosk down an ‘apian way’ inside a prison guard residential compound off Awolowo Road in Ikoyi. She is very innovative at matching outfits across people of differing gender and sizes, such as a family or group that want to attend an event with a visible unified identity.

The second tailor was a young guy off the back of Yesufu Sanusi Street in Surelere. His results always impressed, though you could never come to him with an exact prescription for what you needed. He understood ‘instruction’ as a broad notion. You would always get something edgy and innovative. But that’s not what you always want.

Then comes to my third tailor – Solomon. Solomon designs natives only one way. It doesn’t matter what you say, or draw, or even give him a design. There is a fixed limit of designs that are all in his head, and there is an industrial strength firewall preventing anything else getting in and adding to, or displacing them. Solomon creates pristine, understated and yet impressive garments intended for the mature business statesman. He will work with any fabric but prefers guinea brocade or lace.

Solomon

I first met Solomon about fifteen years ago after eating lunch at a bar-restaurant called ‘Havana 2’ at the junction of Ahmadu Bello Way and Adetekumbo Ademola in VI. It was the second such venture by Ray Herrington and Dave Inglis, the original one having been on Ribadu Road in Ikoyi. Solomon was remonstrating with a man on the roadside just outside the compound. It seemed the man had got Solomon to tailor something for him, and was then trying to negotiate down from the agreed price after the job was done. As I drew a little closer I realised I knew who the other guy was, not well, but we had some shared business acquaintances. He tried to turn his face to one side in an effort to pretend he hadn’t noticed me. I’d describe the guy as Nigerian born of foreign extraction, but I don’t want to write more, because its unnecessary to link his despicable behaviour with an ethnicity shared by some upstanding people I know, who are nothing like him. Simply put, he is not short a few thousand Naira.

I interjected and told the guy I heard everything. ‘You know I am a guy that gets himself about… if you refuse to pay this man what’s owed, what I have seen and heard today is going to be my favorite party and business lunch story for months to come. On the other hand, you can just settle him, and this conversation never happened and we never met today. Your choice’.

After, Solomon was ever so gracious and wanted to buy me a beer. I told him I needed to get back to the office,  and had a lot of work to do, but I was interested in his tailoring and would take his phone number.

Solomon seemed around sixty years old when I met him. He didn’t have such an easy life. His father was Yoruba and his mother was Idoma. His father had a British Military administrative job posted in Benue State. After independence, his father got transferred to a Nigerian civil posting to Lagos State. Solomon was about a year and some months alone with his mother in Benue who then died of some disease. His mother’s family packed him to meet his father in Lagos. Shortly after this his father was made redundant from his civil job. Solomon lost the free schooling that came with his father’s job.

Solomon’s father apprenticed him to a truck driver who owned his own truck. Sometimes if the journey was running behind time, Solomon would have to drive to allow the owner to rest. He was not yet tall enough to reach the pedals and he had woodblocks to help. He related how the pedals were so stiff and hard to press. At some point the owner, who was old, passed away somehow. Unusually for a Nigerian man of that time, he had no children and Solomon got to collect the truck.  Solomon describes this as the only bit of luck in his life, although the truck was an old 1960’s FIAT which was always breaking down, and he knew nothing about haulage contracts or how to get business.

Bad luck struck again at some unspecified time later. Solomon was in a crash in which his truck was totalled and he lost a leg. He was given a prosthetic limb, but with no truck of his own, the harsh haulage world of Nigeria was perceived too much of a risk by haulage managers to give Solomon a driving job. There were plenty of younger, fitter, able-bodied men equally anxious to get a chance.

A glimmer of hope came when Solomon visited some extended family of his father’s resident in Ikorodu. It seemed following his move from Benue to Lagos as a child decades earlier, personal effects of his mother had been sent to them unknown to him and had been there all this time.

One of the items was an old classic manual Singer sewing machine. Moreover, his family were in the ‘Beer Parlour’ business. Apart from several beer parlours around unremarkable parts of Lagos Mainland, they had three beer parlours side by side on Kuramo Beach.

Solomon was given a section of sheltered and fenced beach to the front of the middle beer parlour on which to site his sewing machine. He was also given a very basic but secure room inside. This was an excellent opportunity for him as he had a captive market with the transient inhabitants of Kuramo for ‘N100 here, N200 there’, repairs done in a few minutes, while stepping outside the Kuramo gateway he was on Adetekumbo Ademola, rubbing shoulders with the most privileged of Lagos. He became ‘The Kuramo Chairman Tailor’

Kuramo Beach

Kuramo Beach was one of the most dangerous places in Lagos to be at one point. An online story teller described the place at night…. ‘makeshift structures … commercial sex … no electricity or convenience. the entire atmosphere reeks of marijuana … fierce-looking boys give unfamiliar visitors the kind of look that would send shivers (down) their spines…. no light in the whole area’

Many of the ‘makeshift structures’ referred, were hastily constructed efforts to shelter by transients, but the best of the beer parlours, which included those of Solomon’s relatives, were builders quality wood raised platform built on foundationed structural concrete stilt pillars. Roofs were galvanized corrugated steel.

Police maintained a strong presence outside the Kuramo Gate, and ‘uneasy’ visitors with some legitimate business reason to be there generally stayed within police view, if they ventured in during darkness, requiring their contact to meet them close to the gate.

Up to around the middle of 2010, various security details randomly patrolled the beach. This was because of rumoured politicians and high profile individuals chilling out on the beach ‘incognito’, but as development plans for ‘Eko Atlantic’ started to progress, these random security efforts evaporated. The area inside the gate began to be self-policed (area boys and agbero).

Solomon was a man of considerable physical presence who had upper arms the size of many men’s thighs. But his size was a liability when it came to his prosthetic limb and moving around was visibly uncomfortable for him. So after the first ‘native’ I collected from Solomon, I began to enter Kuramo and collect from his spot.

He developed respect and loyalty on the beach, particularly among beach boys and agbero. If they walked past his spot they would semi-bow as they went, and say ‘Chairman’. The first time I walked to his spot, he instructed one of them to meet me at the gate and escort me to him, but after, it wasn’t necessary as they all knew I concerned him.

Nevertheless, I avoided going there in darkness. I generally collected from him during a gap in my working day, which wasn’t always strictly ‘lunch time’. I knew he was always waiting on the money, so if work made it impossible for me to arrive in the day, I would get there on close of work.

If it had to be evening, I would try to make it Friday, because the beach suya mallams started early on Friday. It was some of the best suya in the state. I could sit with Solomon, hear a great story or two, eat suya (my favourite is one called ‘assorted meats’) take two beers and be gone by 8pm.

I’m not fearful by nature, but if there is no business imperative to be somewhere of known risk, then there’s little point loitering where late hour brings increased risk.

The first signs of bad things to come.

Kuramo beach used to be a narrow sand ridge ranging between about 15m at the narrowest point at high tide, and 50m at the broadest point at low tide. It had two bodies of water each side of the ridge. The open Atlantic was on one side, while a stagnant saltwater body, the Kuramo Lagoon, lay at the other side. Twice a year, there were seasonal exceptional high tides. During this time, the highest tidal point would see water rush across the entire ridge, into the lagoon. The phenomenon wasn’t sufficiently high to reach the raised floor level of beer parlours and would pass underneath. This only lasted a few days.

‘Makeshift structures’ were at risk,  though the timing of these biannual events were a matter of meteorological prediction, and the public information generally filtered down to beach inhabitants well in advance. Beer parlour owners were generally helpful and would take transients most prized possessions for a few days  safe-keeping if asked. The worst likely to happen is a series of unexpected salt water baths!

Some point in 2010 things started to change. I was in a unique position to acknowledge this. This was because firstly, I had undisturbed access to the site of observation (due to Solomon) and secondly, because I understood what I was looking at.

The tidal currents were systematically eating into the sand ridge and carrying the sand out to sea.

By early 2011, the sand ridge as a permanent structure had been completely undermined. Then the inevitable happened. The next seasonal high tide that came washed even the most anchored of structures away, destroying livelihoods and even with some loss of life.

Solomon’s sewing machine was lost. I located some of his relatives a few days later, exiting the Kuramo Gate with what they could salvage. They ‘understood’ that he was personally safe, and speculated he was on his way to Ikorodu, though his phone was not going through.

COASTAL EROSION

Coastal Erosion is a real phenomenon in the ‘islands’ area of Lagos

Throughout the second half of 2010 and forward,  the building of a breakwater structure, the precursor to the Eko Atlantic Development, could be seen out in the harbour, from either Kuramo or Bar Beach.

Managing Coastal Erosion (1990) National Academies of Sciences , Engineering Medicine, National Academies Press, US states:

‘A quantitative understanding of these short and long-term shoreline changes is essential for the establishment of rational policies to regulate development of the coastline zone. Shoreline changes can be due to natural causes or they can be human-induced. Several common causes of shoreline changes are:

• construction or modification of inlets for navigational purposes
• construction of harbors with breakwaters built in nearshore regions’

Boss Africa Blogspot makes its claim more direct in August 2012 with an article entitled: ‘Lagos State Proceeds With “Eko Atlantic” Project That Caused Deadly Ocean Surge’

The tripple whammy – Flooding, Rising Sea Level from Climate Change, and Coastal Erosion.

Much of the islands areas of Lagos is either at or below sea level.

This means a number of things:

1. Drainage, driven by gravity has to find its way to the sea. If the land is below the level of the sea, there is nowhere for flood water to flow to. Water does not flow uphill. Human beings have known this ever since Isaac Newton got hit on the head with an apple.

2. Climate change is causing sea levels to rise, and we can expect to see the rise rate continually accelerate. It took all of the 20th century to rise from 1.4mm  to 3.2mm PA.  Between 2000 and 2016 (16 years) the rate has risen 0.2mm to 3.4mm PA and then in just another 4 years it has reached 3.6mm PA.

3. Land Reclamation around the islands, and in particular in respect to the Eko Atlantic program has served the purpose of displacing currents to cause erosion somewhere else and magnify the problems articulated in #1 and #2.

The islands are the wrong part of Lagos to upset the marine equilibrium through construction intervention. The area is on a submergence risk knife edge, and every effort to artificially constrain it, is just introducing a multiple of the problem somewhere close by.

“We need to look at our infrastructures — drainage systems, waste management facilities, housing structures … How resilient and adaptive are these infrastructures in the face of environmental pressures and when put side-by-side with our growing population?” said Seyifunmi Adebote, a Nigerian environmentalist, who advocates against Nigeria’s “largely poor” response to climate change.

I have always advocated that up near Badagry would be the ideal location to develop a modern Mega-City supported by a cutting edge port terminal. OK.. APM Maersk pulled out of it in 2016 for their own reasons.

This doesn’t mean other parties, supported by Lagos State, can’t make it happen. It’s got good potential for easy transport connectivity with major industrial activities in both Ogun and Oyo States, ease of access to Benin Republic, and no matter how much road transport demand increases, there is no need to build more expensive bridges… Did I mention no need for more bridges? Maybe I should write that three times!

There is plenty of land in the Badagry area over 8m above sea level.

So where does Lagos need to go from here?

Well, anywhere except for more development, or more gerrymandering with coastal conditions anywhere near the islands, might be a good idea.

As it is they need to be anticipating the future and perhaps rename ‘Banana Island’ to ‘Coral Island’, because at some point, probably still in my lifetime, there will be a higher chance of sea corals growing there than bananas!

Perhaps Plato’s ideas about the lost city of Atlantis were not so much speculative as prophetic?

Morocco was a good guess but its just a bit too far north. It’s in Lagos, Nigeria, it just hasn’t submerged yet.

Oh and the development consortium spelled the name wrong… It’s not Eko Atlantic… It’s Eko Atlantis 

References and Acknowledgements (Not in main body text):

worldatlas.com/articles/where-is-atlantis-is-atlantis-real.html

ocean.si.edu/through-time/ancient-seas/sea-level-rise

www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-sea-level

http://bossafrica.blogspot.com/2012/08/lagos-state-proceeds-with-eko-atlantic.html

dailypost.ng/2012/08/20/lagos-ocean-surge-more-bodies-recovered/

www.nap.edu/read/1446/chapter/4

www.cknnigeria.com/2012/06/goodthe-bad-and-ugly-side-of-kuramo.html

www.greenmatters.com/p/lagos-floods

therainbowonline.net/water-take-homes-roads-vi-lekki-hit-worst-flooding-recent-years/

www.freemaptools.com/elevation-finder.htm