Education
RDI urges Lagos to halt destructive dredging in Okun Alfa – EnviroNews
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The Renevlyn Development Initiative (RDI) has called on the Lagos State Government to immediately halt destructive dredging and sand mining activities in the Okun Alfa axis of Eti-Osa Local Government Area, warning that the coastal community is at risk of extinction as rising ocean waters continue to swallow large portions of its land.
The call followed a fact-finding visit by an RDI team to the community, where it interacted with residents and assessed the impact of coastal erosion and other activities threatening the area.
In a statement issued in Lagos, RDI said the people of Okun Alfa were increasingly becoming victims of development activities and what it described as the greed of wealthy interests, pointing to the expansion of Eko Atlantic and the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project, which has also taken up part of the community.
The organisation urged the government to stop destructive activities along the shoreline and urgently deploy measures, including the construction of wave breakers, to protect the community from further ocean incursion.
RDI Executive Director, Philip Jakpor, described the situation in Okun Alfa as heartbreaking, stressing that the community had existed for hundreds of years before recent development activities began threatening its survival.
“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,” Jakpor said.
He noted that the only significant intervention by the Lagos State Government to reduce the impact of ocean incursion in the community was during the administration of former Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola, when some wave breakers were constructed.
According to him, however, the intervention has provided only temporary relief, with residents telling the RDI team that the existing wave breakers were too few to effectively withstand the increasing force of the Atlantic Ocean.
RDI Project Officer, Linda Amadi, said women in the community were bearing a disproportionate share of the consequences of coastal erosion, particularly as many fishing families had lost their livelihoods and homes.
“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 displacements whenever the ocean incursion happens,” Amadi said.
She also called for empowerment programmes, skills training and access to funding and soft loans for women and other vulnerable groups whose livelihoods have been affected by coastal erosion.
Residents of Okun Alfa are predominantly engaged in fishing and fish trading, activities that have sustained the community for decades.
The RDI said the community had lost more than 1,000 metres of land to ocean incursions over the years, with residents reporting that the situation had become significantly worse since 2011.
According to the organisation, the worsening erosion has been linked by residents to development projects undertaken in parts of Eti-Osa and Ibeju-Lekki Local Government Areas, as well as the more recent construction of the Federal Government’s Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway.
RDI stressed that while infrastructure development was necessary, it should not come at the expense of vulnerable coastal communities whose livelihoods and ancestral homes were being threatened.
It therefore urged the Lagos State Government and other relevant authorities to urgently undertake a comprehensive assessment of the environmental and social impacts of dredging, sand mining and major coastal infrastructure projects in the area.
The organisation further called for stronger coastal protection measures, adequate compensation and resettlement arrangements for displaced residents, and livelihood support for affected fishing communities to prevent further deterioration of living conditions in Okun Alfa.