BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Eko AtlAntic City 26 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2012 DEVELOPMENT BUSINESS A MAMMoth New DEvElopMEnt on thE coAstlinE of Lagos Words Tolu Ogunlesi Part of Lagos’s centuries-long fight o keep the ocean at bay he is helping to create for those forever, a wall – The Great with the ocean, who will inhabit Eko Atlantic City TWall of Lagos – is rising. when it’s up and running by the From the Bar Beach Waterfront Eko Atlantic City, end of the decade. “Unless I get of Lagos’s Victoria Island it looks a job here I don’t think I’ll ever be like a grey snake nestled in the will supposedly able to enter the city,” he says. water. Once completed, the “This place is for big men.” He’s seven-kilometre-long mass of relieve congestion heard that one square metre of rocks, topped by five-ton concrete land costs 700,000 naira – about blocks, will rise nine metres above in the fast-growing $4,000. (South Energyx Limited sea level. The developers, South says prices actually start from Energyx, say it will withstand the megalopolis. Some $850 per square meter, with worst storms that the ocean can plot dimensions starting from a muster for the next two centuries. herald it as part of minimum of 2,000 square meters). Actually, they are banking on this, On his current income, Inyang that the wall will protect Eko Atlantic an economic rebirth would have to work for one year to City, their massive new $6 billion earn 700,000 naira. To prove it infrastructure and real estate for the city, others he rummages through his nearby development being built on land grader and returns with a sheet reclaimed from the Atlantic ocean. are more sceptical. of paper on which is scribbled his name, a Guarantee Trust Bank In the Trenches account number, and “N18,000.” Eko Atlantic City is off-limits – next to the wall of a warehouse in That money, he says, was for two to wanderers and the curious, which Eko Atlantic’s giant concrete weeks’ worth of work. The wage and signs to this effect are boldly pipes are molded. His name is for workers like him ranges from printed on the main gate to the Lawrence Inyang and he’s 57 years N1,500 ($10) to N2,000 ($18) development, on Victoria Island’s old. He is one of the hundreds per day. I ask him if he would take Ahmadu Bello Way. The only other of men working to make the Eko a plot of land here if it were offered entrance is from the far end, via Atlantic City a reality. He drives a to him. “I won’t take it,” he says. Bar Beach, which is itself policed by Volvo “motor-grader” – an imposing “Even if I take it I’ll sell. Maybe after enterprising young men who have piece of machinery that resembles 20 or 30 years the wall will break. made a business of collecting an a caterpillar. “My job is to do all the I can’t stay here. I’m scared, I have entrance fee from anyone wanting roads in here,” he says, something to be honest with you. One day this to walk along the water. I begin he’s been doing for close on place might sink or be overrun by here, making my way past revellers two years. There are no feeding water. We see it on TV all the time, and shoeless prayer-warriors, arrangements in the living quarters, [footage from other countries], headed in the direction of the new he tells me, which is why he’s here, where floods come and cover entire development. making his food. “We’re up to 12 in houses.” I soon come to a stretch of one room. All we do is sleep there giant, rusty steel tubing, part of the and then go to work,” he says. On Why Lagos Needs Eko Atlantic machinery of the city-in-progress. In weekends he goes home to his City the distance is a cluster of workers’ family in Ikorodu, one of Lagos’s Lagos, which sits in the south- cabins, painted green. I spot a lone fastest-growing urban corridors, far western region of western Nigeria, man, cooking out of a makeshift away on the mainland. is a city perpetually on the brink kitchen – a ramshackle wooden The life he lives now has nothing of flooding. Bounded in the South shed topped with aluminium sheets in common with the kind of life by the Atlantic Ocean, the city is www.ventures-africa.com 27 BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT A BElgiAn DrEDging vEssEl, thE congo rivEr, is Doing Most of thE hEAvy lifting. By thE tiME its work is DonE, 140 Million of man over nature. This same and development. According to tonnEs of sAnD woulD hAvE year, Lagos Governor Babatunde South Energyx, 80 percent of Phase BEEn DrEDgED froM thE floor Fashola launched an even more 1 has already been sold to private of thE AtlAntic, to crEAtE thE daring project – Eko Atlantic City, developers – the equivalent of one envisioned as a land reclamation fifth of the total land mass that will nEw city. project to restore the Lagos be available. coastline. His predecessor, Bola Eko Atlantic will not be a cheap Tinubu, had in July 2006 granted city in which to live. But, according the concession for the reclamation to a company official, their research situated on the mainland, home to and development project, including has found that Eko Atlantic offers 70 percent of the city’s population a 78-year lease for the developed cheaper land, in dollars per square with series of islands and a land to South Energyx. meter, than Banana Island, Ikoyi peninsula that holds the remaining A Belgian dredging vessel, the and Victoria Island – Lagos’ most 30 percent. At the heart of the city bizarrely named, Congo River, is expensive developments. He lies the expansive Lagos Lagoon. doing most of the heavy lifting. By pointed out an even more striking Today, if it were a country, Lagos the time its work is done, 140 advantage: unlike their counterparts would be Africa’s fifth largest million tonnes of sand would have across the rest of highbrow economy – as is, Lagos is Africa’s been dredged from the floor of Lagos, residents of Eko Atlantic second largest city. It is one of the the Atlantic to create the new city. will not have to budget for power fastest growing cities in the world Three million square kilometres of generators or boreholes, or worry – from a population of 300,000 land have already been reclaimed. about organising their own sewage in 1950 it has grown to some 15 When the reclamation is complete disposal and rigging their own million people. The United Nations in 2015, nine million square Internet connections. predicts that by 2015 it will have a kilometres of land will sit where, a population of over 25 million. decade earlier, the ocean sat, terra- Supporters versus Naysayers Between 1908 and 1912, firma for a city one-and-half times With a price tag of $6 billion, British colonial authorities the size of adjoining Victoria Island. Eko Atlantic is as ambitious constructed three “moles” or The dredging and land reclamation as it is controversial. Publicity “breakwaters” around Bar Beach, is being carried out by Belgian material describes it as “a city to ease the movement of ships into firm Dredging International (DI), born from the sea”. It has also the Lagos Harbour. These moles while Dutch firm Royal Haskoning been touted as the ‘Manhattan’ of disrupted the natural flow of the designed and is building the Great West Africa. The project started ocean and set up tidal action that Wall. Providing architectural out as a land reclamation effort would, over the next century, erode services are MZ Architects (with but is also publicised as a way more than one kilometre of Bar offices in the Middle East and North of building a Lagos dream. The Beach coastline. Since the late Africa) and ar+h Architects. developers, South Energyx, say it 1950s there have been several will be home to 250,000 people unsuccessful attempts to keep Who’s Paying and How Much? when completed, with 150,000 the ocean at bay, by sand-filling. The project’s main funders commuting in and out for work. By the turn of the 21st century, are three Nigerian banks: First Lagos State Governor Fashola the Atlantic had crept dangerously Bank, First City Monument Bank speaks of creating a “model mega- close to the heart of Victoria Island, (FCMB) and Guaranty Trust Bank city for Africa. A city where people eventually washing away half of the (GTBank) – all publicly traded on can live, work and play”. Marketing Ahmadu Bello coastal road. the Nigerian Stock Exchange. The material claims that “instead of the In December 2005, the international bank BNP Paribas is claustrophobic city environment government launched the Shoreline also heavily invested. The balance of Lagos, Eko Atlantic will provide Protection Project, which involved of the funds needed will come from dramatic views over the Atlantic the construction of a kilometre- land sales. None of the funding will Ocean, clear, tree-lined streets and long wall of interlocking concrete come from the government, whose open spaces”, and that “instead blocks and stone. The project role is limited solely to providing of the frequent power cuts, water was commissioned in 2008 and the concession for the project and shortages and communications trumpeted as a decisive victory receiving taxes on the land sales breakdowns that are well known 28 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2012 DEVELOPMENT BUSINESS World, details his experiences living in four squatter communities on four continents.