http://allafrica.com/stories/200811210120.html Lagos — Scientists and environmental experts have warned that millions of people in Nigeria could be displaced by rising sea levels in the next half century, as ocean surges swamp some of Africa's most expensive real estate and its poorest slums, Reuters reported yesterday.

Painting a very worrying picture, the experts warn that Lekki, in Lagos State, and the entire Bayelsa State may sink because of adverse environmental conditions.

But the Lagos State Government has assured the people that pre-emptive efforts are already being taken to forestall the doomsday scenario.

"Lagos is a megacity with 15 million people, half of them at two meters (6 ft) above sea level, and that puts them at risk as hardly any other big city in the world," Stefan Cramer, Nigeria director of Germany's Heinrich Boll Foundation think-tank and an adviser to the Nigerian government on climate change, was quoted by Reuters to have explained.

Cramer, speaking at the launch of a Nigerian documentary on climate change, said most scientists predicted sea levels would rise by one metre over the next 50 years or so.

"In 50 years with a one-metre sea level rise, two million, three million people would be homeless, By the end of the century we would have two metres and by that stage Lagos is gone as we know it," he told Reuters.

Lagos state government has been battling to reinforce the long sand spits such as Bar Beach which protect the mouth of the main lagoon from the Atlantic.