It was a home for all sorts of people: the handicaps, commercial sex workers, prostitutes, and other fun-seekers. But last week Saturday, the popular relaxation spot experienced a terrible development when the Atlantic Ocean surged and overflowed its banks, killing 15 people, mostly women traders and children, in the process.
About 1,500 residents of the ocean area were displaced by the raging water. Many of them were also unable to salvage their belongings. The beach which consists mainly of shanties, kiosks, also serves as revenue source for the state and local governments.
The surge, it was gathered, started on the night of Friday, August 17 but became violent at about 5 am Saturday, sweeping away the once bumbling beach.
A security personnel, Eze Nwaeze, told Weekly Trust that the ocean surge has been recurring but that this year’s incident was unusual.
“Ocean volatility is an annual disaster at the Atlantic Ocean. We did not witness any loss of lives last year despite the strong waves, though we lost property. This year was most traumatic. Every month of August, the water used to overflow. We have lost many people this year. See Alhaji there, Olowowa, Joseph, all of them security men, who were trying to rescue those in danger. They all died.
Pointing at their corpses he said “See they were all there. They were inside the boat, unfortunately the boat capsized and got broken into two,” he explained.
Nwaeze, who has been staying on the beach since 1999, said the area has never witnessed such degree of devastation before.
“We have to get government to help us. All these people that have died have been living on the beach for more than 30 years, struggling, trying to make ends meet and they all know how to swim. We have had different governors in the state with lots of promises during elections but after they won, they will never look our way. Yesterday, government discovered five bodies; today, (Monday), we have recovered more. We cannot say exactly the number of people that had died,” he said.
As at Thursday, 10 bodies were washed ashore at different locations around the Atlantic Ocean. The remaining five bodies are believed to have been trapped under the belly of the ocean.
Narrating how the incident happened, Njeku James, one of the security personnel at the beach, said the ocean wave became strong at about 5 am last Saturday and suddenly the beach overflowed. Some tried to save others, using the available boat, but they also met their death.
“Unfortunately, as they were thronging, the sand-filled link caved in and swept all the men in the boat away. They were security men. We have seen their dead bodies. I can identify Joseph, Alhaji, Olowowa; all of them died,” he said.
He attributed the surge to increased construction works, blockade and land reclamation on Victoria Island.
“I don’t think adequate environmental impact assessment was carried out before the constructions began,” he stated, noting that what he saw was akin to “some sort of tsunami in the making.”
With the development, the state government ordered the immediate evacuation of the waterfronts.
Commissioner for Waterfront Infrastructure Development, Segun Oniru who disclosed this said the process started with the evacuation of the Kuramo Beach to make way for movement of sand into the area.
This action, the commissioner explained, had to be taken to avert the disaster of the Atlantic joining the Kuramo Waters and
subsequently the Lagoon.
The commissioner, who explained that the state is at the receiving end of extreme weather condition due to its location, noted that other coastal waterfront areas badly affected from which people would be evacuated include Badagry and Ojo Waterfront areas, Bar Beach, Kuramo Beach, Goshen Estate, Maiyegun and Alpha Beach.
He added that the state emergency services have already been mobilized to continue to monitor the situation and respond accordingly. He urged everyone to remain calm.
“This ocean surge is a worldwide issue and this is our own share of it,” he said.
Oniru’s reaction came as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Lagos called on the federal government to stop with immediate effect, the sand filling of lagoons and beaches in the state.
However, the commissioner said, “The surge has nothing to do with the Eko Atlantic City. Since the commencement of the ongoing construction of the city, it has protected the entire Victoria Island, Ikoyi and others.
“One can imagine what would have happened if this intervention from the state government was not there. The entire Island would have been submerged by water.
According to him, the shipwreck also didn’t cause the surge. What ship wreck does is that one side of the ship will be accumulating sand while the other will have high erosion. The only thing ship wreck will cause is that it will disturb the natural flow of that which nourishes the shoreline.”
The commissioner assured the people that the state government would remove the wrecked ships from the ocean very soon, maintaining that the two issues have nothing to do with ocean surge.
Also, the chairman, Iru-Victoria Island Local Council Development Area of Lagos, Abayomi Daramola, who visited the beach, said he was happy he ordered the demolition of shanties at the place two months ago owing to their extension by the people.
According to him, more lives would have been lost in the Saturday’s tragedy, if he had not demolished some of the shanties.
He added that about 5,000 people hitherto lived on the shore before the June demolition exercise.
He said: “We decided about a month and a half ago to move into the village to see how people were living there. During our visit, we found out that thousands of people were living in deplorable condition.
“We then decided we needed to clear some of the shanties and see how to improve the conditions of the place. We ejected a lot of people from the community. When we took the step at the time, there were lots of protests and complaints.”
Explaining the council`s side on allegation that the LCDA collect fees for the spaces the shanties were built, Daramola said: “The development area only collected “on and off fees” commencing from last month to clean up the area.”
He promised that the council will assist families who want to bury the victims in terms of expenses. “We will also take care of the expenses for transporting the bodies of victims to wherever the families would like to take them for burial,” he noted.
Outside the beach entrance, scores of evicted squatters of Kuramo were seen milling around the premises of Lagos Atlantic Sales office. Their travails were conspicuous in their appearances. While some were polite, others, perhaps due psychological trauma the sudden eviction have caused them, were simply hostile.
Some of them were discussing in groups when Weekly Trust visited the area. Attempts by Weekly Trust to get some of them to talk about their experience were rebuffed with one of them, simply identified as Rose, saying “Do you bring money for us or what? That name, journalist is even infuriating me. You people were the ones who aggravated the whole thing beyond what it was. You wrote all sorts of headlines that forced the government to chase us out of our homes. Abeg leave us alone or you have money for us to share? As you see us we are not interested in saying anything to you.”
But not all evictees share Rose’s frustration. Cynthia Jude, a 31 year-old mother of one, who claimed to have managed to salvage few of her belongings when the demolition team of the state government swarmed on their shanties, said the operation was carried out without human face. She said even though the government action was to correct the anomaly, the eviction has now made them refugees in their country.
“It is not as if we enjoy living on the beach. But situation of things in the country actually brought us here,” Cynthia said as she strapped her wailing 18 month old baby to her back.”Now that we are thrown to the cold winds of the island, where do Fashola and his commissioners want us to relocate to?” she queried.
Afsat Babalola, a street sweeper in the employment of the state sponsored Lagos State Waste Management Authority (LAWMA), was seen sitting on what was left of her belongings. Looking unsure what the future holds for her and her ilk, the middle age woman said the rage with which the demolition team carried out the exercise was disheartening. She lamented that since their houses were demolished she has squatted around and has not been able to change her cloth except for the LAWMA jacket she wears.
Meanwhile, the state government has embarked on palliatives response as a construction firm was seen on the beach, sand-filling vulnerable areas.
