Environment and development in coastal regions and in small islands

Deflooding Lagos, a hard nut to crack

For residents of Lagos, the wet season is not always the best time of the year. It is a period that comes with the intimidating problems of flooding. When it happens, many homes are swamped, property worth fortune are destroyed and sometimes human lives are involved as the floods tide sweep away everything in their path, leaving residents to recount tales of woes.

This year is no exception as the perennial problem has reared its ugly head again.

Once again, Lagos State, the home of more than 10 million, is under water. This is despite the N300 million Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu has made available to deflood the city.

Environmental watchers and experts believe that this holistic approach announced by the Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Mr. Dele Alake, recently cannot scratch the surface of the problem.

And Lagos apparently has itself to blame for this state of affairs. Much of the state lies below sea level. Despite this, it has embarked on an unprecedented land reclamation. One result is the enormous environmental damage. The indiscrimnate draining has tilted the balance in the ecosystem.

Toeing this line of thought, Dr. Olukoya Adeleke-Adedoyin says that the prevailing phenomenon is occasioned by the rate of absorption of water into the ground which is ever so low, due to the disruption in the ecosystem and of the haphazard manner in which the cities are urbanised.

The Permanent Secretary of the Ogun State Environmental Protection Agency who was visibly disturbed by this larger than life threat because his state, the next door neighbour to Lagos, shares in this problem, revealed that Lagos would continue to experience these "flash" floods.

His words: "When we are planning , we don’t consider the texture of the land, when the rain fall, the velocity of the rain, will run off to create problem somewhere."

Drawing a parallel with Amsterdam, which though it is below sea level, does not witness flooding like Lagos, Dr. Adeleke-Adedoyin said: "In Amsterdam, they built on the surface of water by using pillars, but what happens here is that, we are doing a lot of reclamation. We have to draw up sand from the sea to fill up the swampy areas. The result is that because we have already tampered with nature, it is nearly impossible to find a lasting solution to such threat.

In places like Amsterdam that I have just mentioned, all the drainage they have provided, they have considered the gradient of discharge of run off water during rain fall and melting snow. But in our case, we have destroyed nature courtesy of the sandfilling of low level areas to create land for building. And this is done to the detriment of the environment."

Corroborating the view expressed by Dr. Adeleke-Adedoyin, the Director of Flood, Erosion and Control in OSEPA, Yomi Adesanya, an engineer, posited that "when you impede, you are creating a barrier and the water will back up behind the barrier to such a time that it can overflow the barrier."

Adesanya decried the lacklustre attitude of the government which, according to him, include problems of land management, bad planning, inconsistency in policies as well as discontinuity in governance.

On what his agency as the mouth organ is doing, particularly in Ogun State, to stall the menace, Adesanya declared:

"The economy doesn’t grant the government enough funds to tackle it effectively. The very precarious one like the one in Ota and Ijebu Ode, where houses are threatened, we draw government’s attention to it."

He pointed out that the cost of bringing the situation to its bearest minimum to forestall adverse effects is colossal, even as he said that the state government needs the magnanimity of the Federal Government to be able to make an edgeway.

Adesanya, however, extends a wake up call to the government to properly harness the land use planning and capability classification which, he said, are currently in a mess.

"Government should endeavour to use technocrats in executing its programmes. Lack of this has often worked at cross purposes against development."

The Lagos State government, on its part, apparently is not resting on its oars. At present the state needs about N3 billion to wage an onslaught against flooding.

This is the period for privatisation programme for major industries and parastatals. The reason, of course, is that the problem of flooding causes immobility in Lagos, the business Mecca of Lagos and the most likely place for much of the privatised business concerns.

Recently, Lagos State Commissioner for Environment and Physical Planning Kayode Anibaba, an architect, in a public and media forum on the drainage and flooding problems in the state, painted a gloomy picture of the obstruction of the free flow of the drainage system which has aggravated flooding on Victoria Island, a highbrow residential-cum-commercial hub.

Said he: "Most of these buildings were built along the drainage routes, thereby obstructing the free flow of the drainage system and aggravating the flooding situation."

From the foregoing, indications are that no fewer than 1,600 houses and commercial properties stand to be axed.

It would be recalled that in November last year, the state government issued a public notice that offending landlords should remove the parts of their structure causing the obstruction within 14 days.

According to the notice, "Failure to remove or comply with this notice (clause) will result in the government removing the offending structures at cost to their owners."

However, it is disheartening that 8 months after the warning was issued out, nothing concrete has been done.

According to Anibaba, the drainage and flooding situations in the state are often being neglected and as such, the state government has resolved to deal "ruthlessly with the erring persons by applying the full weight of the law."

A visiting UNESCO representative from Paris, Dr. Heri Baral, advised: "The development of an integrated coastal management (ICM) programme through national, regional and international co-operation and exchange of wise practices were the only drastic actions that should be taken in solving the perennial environmental problems in the state."

Dr. Baral, a renowned expert on Coast and Small Island (CSI) matters, however, linked the debilitating environmental conditions in Lagos State to a lack of adequate planning and continuous developmental scheme by the authorities concerned, saying: "The roles of the people and the government should be complementary, each helping the other to achieve the best for the community and the country at large."

He added: "The incoming danger of the next century will pose serious threats to the urban centres and coastal zones. In the background of this incoming challenge to human development, UNESCO through its platform for environment in coastal regions and in small islands (CSI) has initiated a process which brings together many different approaches in order to improve the practice of ICM, primarily at a grassroot level. The process is entitled "Wise Coastal Practices for Sustainable Human Development."

On assumption of office, Tinubu sent a clarion call to the private sector to help solve some of the perennial problems. Several companies were said to have responded, including HFP Engineering which along with others had undertaken to unblock the drainage system. HFP Engineering in that move commissioned a N3 million drainage clearing contract for the removal of dirt and other waste blocking the drainage in Victoria Island.

However, the Lagos State Government as part of its channelisation scheme, engaged seven construction firms, including Strabag, DTV, JDP, Efoba and Julius Berger among others, to undertake the channelisation of the state, but the task being such a daunting one, the companies were not able to complete the project before the rains set in.

Anibaba, however, promised his ministry is fully prepared to bring the problem to its knees, even as he called on residents to desist from the habit of dumping solid waste in drainage channels as this would go a long way in making Lagos flood-free.

Dr. Abiodun Akinola, permanent secretary, Ogun State Ministry of Health said succinctly that the health implications of the protracted flooding is immeasurable. Cholera, dysentery and other such diseases are the result.

On the plan to arrest this endemic trend, Dr. Akinola called on all hands to be on deck as government alone will not be able to bring about a lasting solution.

Harris-Okon Emmanuel and Gabriel Ade-Ajayi, The Comet - 27 June 2000