Atlantic Ocean May Sink Lekki, Bayelsa

Scientists and environmental experts have warned that millions of people in Nigeria could be displaced by rising sea levels in the next half century, as ocean surges swamp some of Africa's most expensive real estate and its poorest slums, Reuters reported yesterday.
Painting a very worrying picture, the experts warn that Lekki, in Lagos State, and the entire Bayelsa State may sink because of adverse environmental conditions.
But the Lagos State Government has assured the people that pre-emptive efforts are already being taken to forestall the doomsday scenario.
"Lagos is a megacity with 15 million people, half of them at two meters (6 ft) above sea level, and that puts them at risk as hardly any other big city in the world," Stefan Cramer, Nigeria director of Germany's Heinrich Boll Foundation think-tank and an adviser to the Nigerian government on climate change, was quoted by Reuters to have explained.
Cramer, speaking at the launch of a Nigerian documentary on climate change, said most scientists predicted sea levels would rise by one metre over the next 50 years or so.
“In 50 years with a one-metre sea level rise, two million, three million people would be homeless... By the end of the century we would have two metres and by that stage Lagos is gone as we know it,” he told Reuters.
Lagos state government has been battling to reinforce the long sand spits such as Bar Beach which protect the mouth of the main lagoon from the Atlantic.
But the effect would be limited and little was being done in terms of urban planning to adjust to the risks, Cramer told the news agency.
"Most of the construction in Lekki is bound to fail because it is built on sand which has never been properly consolidated," Cramer said. "There's only one option: moving to higher ground."
The news agency said scientists are predicting that heavier rains and higher sea levels could wipe out much of Bayelsa which has a vast network of mangrove creeks home to isolated villages and to Africa's biggest oil and gas industry.
"We may lose quite a good percentage of Lagos ... and probably the whole of Bayelsa," said Emmanuel Obot, executive director of the Nigerian Conservation Foundation.
"If that happens, the refugee problem will be so that I don't think Nigeria is ready," he added.
The creators of "Global Warming: Nigeria Under Attack" plan to show the documentary in schools and churches around Nigeria, according to the report.
With scenes of villagers sitting outside mud huts discussing using less wood in their cooking, or farmers showing crops swept away by flooding, the aim is to tailor the message of films like Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" to an African audience.
"Luckily the scientists are telling us that we haven't run out of time entirely and that if we take the issue seriously, it might not be too late," said producer Desmond Majekodunmi.
A heated controversy had followed similar predictions by Nigeria’s foremost oceanographer, Professor Frederick Apati, who warned in 1990 that Victoria Island, Lagos, could sink in the future because of ocean surge and climate change.
During the gala night hosted last week by Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola in honour of the visiting President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Mr. Horst Koehler at Alausa, Ikeja, Cramer made a presentation on the implications of climate change in Africa.
Commenting at a late night joint press conference with Fashola after viewing the presentation by Cramer, President Koehler expressed the need for Nigeria and other African countries with coastal shelves to begin to take more seriously the dangers posed by global warming to the environment.
Speaking to THISDAY yesterday, the Lagos State Commiss-ioner for the Environment, Dr. Muiz Banire, said there was no cause for alarm as the government had taken adequate pre-emptive measures to guard against global warming and ocean surge.
He listed some of the measures as the continuing shoreline protection, the Eko Atlantic City project which covers a substantial part of the Lekki Peninsula and Victoria Island shorelines, the preservation of lots of wetlands to absorb water in the unlikely event of serious ocean surge, the building of new as well as dredging of existing canals and channels to serve as de-flooding mechanisms, the acquisition of many emergency de-flooding equipment.
The Commissioner also mentioned the accelerated planting of trees to absorb carbon emission, the stoppage of burning of refuse, the increased reliance on usage of renewable solar energy by the state, the emphasis on multi-modal transportation through the establishment of the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), expansion of water transportation channels and the planned rail mass transit systems as some of the measures taken to curtail carbon emission thereby reducing the risk of global warming.
Efforts to reach Bayelsa officials last night were unsuccessful as calls to the phones of Governor Timi Sylva and the Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Doifie Ola, did not go through.