Lagos:  River Lekki, demolitions and the cost of shortsightedness, by Ugoji Egbujo

Lagos is simply a bustling coastal city, truthful its vulnerability to floods is natural. But with a civilization of indiscriminate garbage disposal, haphazard gathering developments, and lousy municipality readying enforcement, Lagos is the origin of overmuch of its ain flooding woes.

Often, governments travel similar pirates oregon parasites—ravenous and impatient, looking for what and wherever to portion and reap. So it isn’t specified argumentation incoherence and discontinuity. Our governments deficiency the temper for painstaking, elaborate planning. The fewer cities successful the state that look planned benefited from the foresight of the assemblage masters. Besides Abuja, we person transformed astir of our cities into slums. Our gathering regulators person nary consciousness of sustainability oregon aesthetics. The aboriginal for them is excessively abstract a concept. With “anything goes” arsenic the culture, our radical dwell successful cutting corners connected their mode to nowhere. The result is dishevelment and impoverishment.

In the precocious 1980s, Lagos opened a beauteous caller corridor. The metropolis of aquatic splendor already had capable slums and had seen decent livable spaces diminution rapidly. Many parts of Oshodi, Mushin, and Ebutte-Metta, which had been planned by the assemblage masters, were already going seedy. Lagos ought to person been wary of leaving spaces to make without ordaining their destinies. There was clip and money   to make bid and unafraid the future. It didnt necessitate immoderate innovation , we could person borrowed designs  from the occidental countries. But radical cheerily took their eyes disconnected the shot arsenic they scrambled to capable their pockets. The occupation wasn’t conscionable greed—it was  profound  shortsightedness 

Now, each rainy season, Lekki becomes a river. Multimillion-naira homes successful posh estates are swamped. Sewage floats into the open  and fills boreholes, the lone root of potable water. Walls soak until they weep and turn algae. Roads erode. Half of the Lekki-Epe Expressway has go denuded, earthy earth. The contents of packed greenish gutters are acceptable escaped dispersed into the sitting rooms and kitchens of large boys and girls. When radical absorption connected short-term gains, they wage semipermanent prices.

The predicament of Lekki and galore flood-prone areas successful Lagos is caused by mediocre drainage. In immoderate places, the authorities looked distant portion radical built estates connected drainage channels. Sometimes, governments sold those drainage channels for plates of porridge, lone for different medication to travel a decennary aboriginal and sound down the buildings. Other times, the authorities built tiny drainage channels, knowing afloat good they would beryllium blocked by cynical residents disposing garbage into gutters. Most drainage channels successful Lagos are useless, blocked by filth. This large situation hasn’t been confronted with innovation. Some governments sold buffer zones and greenish areas. Monies went into backstage pockets to bargain mansions successful planned neighborhoods abroad. All the parks had disappeared earlier Fashola came to recreate a few. The governments and residents of Lagos person to find a consciousness of tomorrow.

Lekki becomes a stream during the rains due to the fact that the lagoon fills up. At these times ,  if  the drains from residential estates and roads aren’t precocious enough, they can’t bare into the lagoon. Once the drains are afloat and stagnant, much rainfall causes homes to flood. In immoderate places, governments looked distant portion radical built connected low-lying grounds. Nobody stopped anybody. Governments beryllium to connection authoritative directions for the communal good. But erstwhile governments let the casual circumvention of regulations, rules are seen arsenic superfluous impediments. In Lagos, arsenic successful astir different cities successful Nigeria, rationality is not governed by backstage advantage.

Our municipality planners knew earlier Lord Lugard that Lagos municipality readying indispensable relationship for floods. They knew that if radical reclaiming swamps and rivers don’t conscionable definite thresholds, they would gnash their teeth. When the Americans came to physique the Chevron Oil property successful Lekki, they knew this. They sandfilled the country properly, raising it to 2.3 meters supra oversea level. It indispensable person made the task a small much expensive, but today, Chevron ne'er floods. With that elevation, its drainage works successful adust and bedewed seasons. But our radical chopped corners to nowhere, and the regulators are taxation collectors. So they indispensable person dismissed Chevron arsenic oversabi. That’s wherefore astir of the estates straight other Chevron are now...