₦airaland Forum

The Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Dr Jide Idris, on Friday said the state plan to immunise 4.3 million

children in the four-day Mop-Up immunisation campaign against Poliomyelitis, scheduled to commence today.

The commissioner, who said that immunisation remains the most cost-effective and efficient strategy to prevent the scourge in the state, urged parents and guardians to ensure that their children of under-five receive the immunisation when health workers come to their doors.

He said in spite of the fact that Lagos State had not recorded incidence of polio since 2009, the state is not resting on its oars to prevent the outbreak of the scourge.

Idris, however, raised the fear that continuous influx of people into the state, especially from the northern states, where the polio cases are still recorded, threaten the polio-free record of the state.

He said: ”The 4-day. Campaign would be implemented by 2,254 house-to-house teams, 1,504 transit and 778 fixed/ transiently fixed posts teams.”

http://thenationonlineng.net/new/news/lagos-to-immunise-4-3-million-children/

Eko oni baje, never

Eni body toba fe ba Lagos je, village e loma baje.

http://premiumtimesng.com/news/109540-ferma-lagos-begin-massive-repair-of-roads-in-lagos.html

The federal and the state agencies are cooperating in their duties.
The Federal Roads Maintenance Agency, FERMA, has said it has begun the rehabilitation of major roads in Lagos to ensure smooth rides during the Yuletide and beyond.
The FERMA Zonal Coordinator, South West 2, Oladipo Fagbamila, said on Sunday in Lagos that the rainy season had slowed down the repairs.

Mr. Fagbamila said that when the agency’s asphalt plant begins operations soon, the menace of potholes would be a thing of the past.
“I assure motorists of a smooth ride during Christmas because the commissioning of our asphalt plant, which is expected soon, will make us more efficient.

“There will not be any pothole on our roads and I assure all Lagosians and those travelling of smooth rides soon,” he said.
He commended the Lagos State Government for selling asphalt to the agency.

Mr. Fagbamila said that Governor Babatunde Fashola’s directive that the Lagos State Public Works Corporation should sell asphalt to FERMA would boost its operations.

Also, the Executive Chairman of the Lagos State Public Works Corporation, Gbenga Akintola , said that the corporation was proactive in carrying out repairs.
Mr. Akintola said that the corporation was always working towards ensuring it rehabilitated roads, irrespective of the season.

“We do not work because there is festival or any programme coming up, because we are proactive, we work at all time,” Mr. Akintola said.
He said that the corporation was currently working on 25 roads at different locations in Lagos, adding that its asphalt plant would soon work at full capacity.

solbil: how you take know say na omo ina him be? Why your mind no go straight to hausa or one of these minorities?

Na omo ina dey always misyarn

I'm gonna add this.
Run for your life criminals, places like Lekki phase 2 and Eko Atlantic City are been watched by Eko Atlantic City Police(EACP) 24/7.
You'll be dead on Arrival, I tell ya

Eko oni Baje, Never

By EMMANUEL UDOM

Criminals in Lagos, south-west Nigeria are reckless, restive and desperate. They want to reap where they did not sow, even as the police and other security agents are working round the clock to ensure that the former capital of Nigeria is crime free these ember months.

In the last couple of weeks, our reporter has been on under-cover mission, looking at how prepared the police, SSS operatives and other security agents are for the Christmas and New Year celebrations in terms of security.

If you say, my dear readers that this is an alarming write-up, you are correct. But, if you think I am working for the police in Lagos, then you ate dead wrong.
Below are some of the top 15 no-go-places criminals should not ever contemplate going near or else trouble, shooting, injuries or death. Lagos state police commissioner, Manko Umar has put security strategies in place to ensure that Lagos is crime-free these celebrations months.
This does not however mean that the state will be free 100% from crime. Crimes and criminalities cannot be totally eradicated from any locality, state, nation or the entire globe. It could only be reduced and checkmated. This is the gospel truth the police and other security agents as well as discerning and observing minds know too well.

1 Banking Hall-Criminal who want to rob banks in Lagos should forget the idea or be prepared for a bloody gun duel with the police. Take it or leave it, since Manko became the commissioner of police in Lagos, the state has not recorded one successful operation, in which robbers loot banks.
Though these devils in human skins have attempted on some occasions to loot banks, they failed woefully. Check crime records as opposed to propaganda, rumors and speculations at the police public relations office in Ikeja, Lagos.


2 Markets- The popular and ever busy Gotangowa, Ipodo Yaba, Idi Araba, Tejuosho, Alaba international market, Ladipo spare-part market, seme market, Idumota market have been infiltrated by police officers and SSS operatives. Off course, this is an alarming write-up and wake-up calls for criminals. Go near any of these markets and you will be dead before the end of December this year. This is what my under-cover mission has revealed


3 Cyber- cafés –Public cyber-cafes have also been infiltrated by security agents. For those yahoo boys, they are been watched directly or indirectly by security agents. This is another potential place where criminals use.


4 Hotels/Guest houses-Hotels and guest houses are potential places where criminals meet to plan their robbery operations or share their loots after a successful robbery operations. The police and CCTV are watching you.


5 Drinking joints- This is another place where potential criminals meet to unwind relax and enjoy themselves after committing all sorts of criminal and other atrocities during the day. Some Nigerians love pleasure, parties, drinks and boasting. When they have taken some bottles of beer they talk carelessly. The person sitting next to your table may as well be an under-cover police officer or SSS operatives.
So, in your best interest as a criminal, repent from your evil ways or as Manko uses to say re-locate from Lagos or else…


6 Churches/Mosques-From catholic to Methodist, pencostal to Anglican, Baptist to the nearest mosque, police and SSS operatives in Lagos have been ordered to ensure that no Boko Haram fellows come near. I do not want to mention names here, but I do know that some churches, especially in Lagos are hiring private security guards, OPC members or police to protect them physically during Sunday services.


7 Eateries-security agents have also infiltrated eateries in various parts of Lagos. Each time you go to the nearest eateries around you, observe the people there carefully and you will see what I mean. Criminals must be dealt with the police are basically everywhere these embers months. Kudos to them.


8 Embassies- All the embassy in Lagos, from independent findings by our reporter is under a close 24-hour watch by internal security, the police and SSS operatives.


9 Uncompleted buildings- The Lagos-Ibadan expressway, Badagry, Epe, Egan, Igando, Alagbado as some of the places in Lagos with bushes and uncompleted buildings. There are also uncompleted buildings in Victoria Island, Ikoyi, Lekki, etc. Criminals also use these buildings to meet plan their operations or share their loots. The police is watching you


10 Traffics- I pity criminals who think they can rob people of their money handsets and other valuable personal items during go-slows and traffics along the
third mainland bridge, Lagos-Abeokuta expressway. There are CCTVs everywhere and there are also under-cover security agents along these routes. Again, I say repent criminals.

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/13466465-top-10-nogoplaces-for-criminals-in-lagos

Nothing new, good development. More hair to their armpit

Just wondering what geez did to have gotten a ban.

Mods please kindly free it( him/her ).

geez*, welcome to the club of banned users.
Just like EKo Atlantic
But Eko Atlantic* and Eko Atlantic# is always there incase of any shi.t

Mods Eko Atlantic has always been banned by Pyrygam .

Free the creature.

Note: if you make any usle.ss comment without invitation on this thread, na Sango go strike you.

onyx79: With comments like this, I know how big your mind is. And how small your brain is. Good timing for the Seafood festival, you could do with a few more fishbrains.

Na wetin go strike you be this

Burger01: What of Sango?...

geeez:
Eko O Ni Baje

Yorubaland O Ni baje!

For all those wishing Lagos and Yoruba land evil, the land will not work for you insha Allah and In Jesus name. Amen

You forgot Obatala

What type of people are in Ilorin?
Ijaw, Urobo, igala?

Time for all yorubas to trace their root(Ife).
Some are lost.

malele: Don't look at only the beauty, we are talking of a structures built on lands captured from an ocean.

The Great Wall of Lagos is formidable in its design and already does a magnificent job of protecting the coastline, even though it's not yet finished.

Over the last 100 years, pounding waves from the Atlantic Ocean have eroded the land off Lagos, bringing the sea closer to the financial centre of Victoria Island. The threat of serious flooding was a major concern. Before the Great Wall, tidal surges used to regularly cause water and debris to spill over onto the main coastal highway – Ahmadu Bello Way.

Today the highway is clear from flooding, already protected, thanks to the development of Eko Atlantic.

Testing the Great Wall

Before the first of the giant concrete armoured blocks for the Great Wall of Lagos was lowered into position, its ability to withstand the worst of the Atlantic tidal surges was put to the test. Urban engineers at DHI, the world-renowned Danish hydraulic research centre, carried out extensive scale model trials. Data analysis by computer models showed that the Great Wall would keep Lagos safe from the worst tidal surges that can be expected.

Facts and Figures on the Great Wall of Lagos

When it's complete, the Great Wall of Lagos will be over 8 kilometres long. It is made from tens of thousands of concrete blocks (accropodes) weighing 5 tons each which interlock loosely to form an effective barrier that dispels the force of the waves and provides the primary armoured sea defence. Beneath the accropodes are various layers of rock that function as the secondary armour and core.

In the first quarter of 2012 the Great Wall of Lagos was already well over 3 kilometres long and is growing at the rate of about 6 metres a day. In its completed form it will protect not only Eko Atlantic, but the whole of the Atlantic coastline off Victoria Island and Lagos.

Creating the Foundations of Eko Atlantic

The Great Wall of Lagos is already so substantial that it has created calm waters between it and the coastline off Bar Beach. The beach is getting bigger with each passing week as sand is dredged from the ocean floor beyond the wall and is pumped in to raise the land level. An area of more than three million square metres of land has already been reclaimed.

The Belgian company, Dredging International, a leader in this field of engineering, is fast-tracking the sand-filling work. Dredging is operational around the clock. This massive operation is being done with great care and efficiency to reclaim land that our grandparents walked on as children.

By the time the work is completed, they will have moved 140 million tons of sand – that's 95 million cubic metres. This massive foundation will form the solid platform on which Eko Atlantic city will stand.

http://ekoatlantic.com/greatwall/index.htm

You didn't read through before posting

Environmental Consideration

In September 2009, Eko Atlantic City was awarded a “Commitment Certificate” by the Clinton Globa lnitiative. The certificate recognises “commitments” by members of the Initiative, who create and implement innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges.

According to the Foundation citation, “South Energyx commits to combating the devastating effects of climate change by reclaiming nine square kilometres of land for a new city, Eko Atlantic. Eko Atlantic will be an environmentally conscious city, built with nature, to restore an original coastline and protect Victoria Island, Nigeria from the severe risk of ocean surge and flooding.”

Environmental activist Ako Amadi, a former Executive Director of the Nigerian Conservation Fund, is sceptical about this claim. “The whole of Lekki [peninsula] used to be wetlands, which helped to mitigate ocean surges,” he tells me. “The loss of the wetlands is not the fault of the government or the builders of Eko Atlantic, but a new city is not going to mitigate things on a sustainable level.”

There have also been demands for the city’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) documents to be made public. Some observers have attempted to link the reclamation to the alarming rate at which water levels are rising in Lagos, a claim Fashola himself has debunked. “The insinuation that the Eko Atlantic City project is the cause of the floods is untrue. It is an uninformed and erroneous view,” the Governor told Channels Television in July 2012. In May this year, South Energyx and the Lagos state government called a press conference to address concerns about the non-availability of an EIA. “The Eko Atlantic Project has completed a full and comprehensive Environmental and Social Impact Assessment on the entire land reclamation works and its sea wall protection, as required under the Nigerian Environmental Impact Assessment Act No. 86 of 1992,” newspaper reports quoted an official of Dutch marine engineering firm, Royal Haskoning, which conducted the assessment, as saying. “The EIA has been carried out in accordance with these regulations.” Around this same time, the CEO of South Energyx, David Frame, said to me, “We have approval from the Federal Ministry of Environment on our EIA.” But Amadi argues that an EIA is not something you do when you’ve started construction. “They started dredging in 2009 and are presenting an EIA in 2012,” Amadi says. “The EIA should have been done around 2008.” He adds that an EIA is a document that “costs money”, and because it is issued by a government ministry, “there are many ways of getting around [it]. It can be waived or fast-tracked.”

Find out more about Eko Atlantic City
http://ekoatlantic.com/

I forgot
Eko and Yoruber oni baje, never

Why not go find another name.
Lagos already has something like that(Eko Atlantic City) and you wanna call yours Atlantic state?!

Suggestions:
Fishermen state
Shoeless people state

My 2 cent

Eko oni baje, never

Why always Lagos?!
You've got a problem with Lagos?! Find the shortest cut to your village

Lagos State Governor, Mr Babatunde Fashola (SAN)  on Saturday flagged off the first ever Lagos Sea Food Festival, describing it as an opportunity to showcase the enormous entrepreneurship, hardwork and resourcefulness of the people who live in the coastal areas.

The Governor who spoke at the Eko Atlantic City Beachfront in Victoria Island venue of the event which had in attendance participants in the Kuramo Conference 2012 and other notables including the First Lady, Dame Emmanuella Abimbola Fashola, traditional rulers and exhibitors said the seafood festival would be an opportunity to promote what is indigenous.

He wondered why residents of Lagos despite their closeness to the coastline and prevalence of fresh fish and seafood still prefer to eat frozen foods, stressing that Lagosians should promote what is their own.

“This Food festival will showcase the enormous opportunities and unlock the treasure box of 180 kilometres of  Atlantic water, our lagoons and creeks which nature has invested in Lagos but which we are yet to optimize”, he added.

The Governor said in coastal areas like Ibeju Lekki, Epe, Eti Osa  and Badagry, there are people who for generations have depended on the natural resources that water provides for Lagos to make a living, adding that the festival is aimed at showcasing them.

Governor Fashola said the timing of the Sea food festival to coincide with the ongoing Kuramo Conference Lagos 2012 is not an accident but one which was debated and decided upon by the members of the State Executive Council to showcase the rural areas in the State.

He explained that it was no accident that during his address at the opening ceremony of the Kuramo Conference 2012, he spoke about how Africa must unlock the opportunities which currently are not available to children of Cote D’ivoire  thus leading to a situation where the country produces cocoa but her children do not know what chocolates tastes like.

The Governor noted that the Lagos Sea Food Festival is being linked with Kuramo because the present administration believes that the exportation of local Nigerian and African cuisines would be one of the milestones that would be recorded and exported to the world in a short while.

Governor Fashola expressed happiness that the festival has also provided opportunities to creative young people who have various items such as local ovens which could be used to smoke the sea foods and exhibited at the festival.

He added that the present administration in Lagos State is very passionate about the exposure of the potentials of the business in seafoods, adding that what is happening at the festival should be what happens on the various beachfronts.

The Governor said for a country like Nigeria, the promotion and encouragement of sea foods business and its economy should be what life away from oil should be.

Earlier, The State Commissioner for Agriculture and Cooperatives, Prince Gbolahan Lawal in an address of welcome said the Lagos Seafood Festival is aimed at showcasing what the local population have and can do.

He added that it would also be an opportunity for the various participants, exhibitors and visitors to the festival to network and expand the frontiers of their businesses.

The Festival was attended by participants at the Kuramo Conference Lagos 2012, traditional rulers, fish entrepreneurs and members of the State Executive Council. It featured exhibitions from various providers of delicacies made from sea foods.

http://www.worldstagegroup.com/worldstagenew/index.php?active=news&newscid=6649&catid=2

Eko oni baje, never

VENTURES AFRICA - To keep the ocean at bay forever, a wall – The Great Wall of Lagos – is rising. From the Bar Beach Waterfront of Lagos’s Victoria Island it looks like a grey snake nestled in the water. Once completed, the seven-kilometre-long mass of rocks, topped by five-ton concrete blocks, will rise nine metres above sea level. The developers, South Energyx, say it will withstand the worst storms that the ocean can muster for the next two centuries.

Actually, they are banking on this, that the wall will protect Eko Atlantic City, their massive new $6 billion infrastructure and real estate development being built on land reclaimed from the Atlantic ocean.

 

In the Trenches

Eko Atlantic City is off-limits to wanderers and the curious, and signs to this effect are boldly printed on the main gate to the development, on Victoria Island’s Ahmadu Bello Way. The only other entrance is from the far end, via Bar Beach, which is itself policed by enterprising young men who have made a business of collecting an entrance fee from anyone wanting to walk along the water. I begin here, making my way past revellers and shoeless prayer-warriors, headed in the direction of the new development.

I soon come to a stretch of giant, rusty steel tubing, part of the machinery of the city-in-progress. In the distance is a cluster of workers’ cabins, painted green. I spot a lone man, cooking out of a makeshift kitchen – a ramshackle wooden shed topped with aluminium sheets – next to the wall of a warehouse in which Eko Atlantic’s giant concrete pipes are molded. His name is Lawrence Inyang and he’s 57 years old. He is one of the hundreds of men working to make the Eko Atlantic City a reality. He drives a Volvo “motor-grader” – an imposing piece of machinery that resembles a caterpillar. “My job is to do all the roads in here,” he says, something he’s been doing for close on two years. There are no feeding arrangements in the living quarters, he tells me, which is why he’s here, making his food. “We’re up to 12 in one room. All we do is sleep there and then go to work,” he says. On weekends he goes home to his family in Ikorodu, one of Lagos’s fastest-growing urban corridors, far away on the mainland.

The life he lives now has nothing in common with the kind of life he is helping to create for those who will inhabit Eko Atlantic City when it’s up and running by the end of the decade. “Unless I get a job here I don’t think I’ll ever be able to enter the city,” he says.

“This place is for big men.” He’s heard that one square metre of land costs 700,000 naira – about $4,000. (South Energyx Limited says prices actually start from $850 per square meter, with plot dimensions starting from a minimum of 2,000 square meters).

On his current income, Inyang would have to work for one year to earn 700,000 naira. To prove it he rummages through his nearby grader and returns with a sheet of paper on which is scribbled his name, a Guarantee Trust Bank account number, and “N18,000.” That money, he says, was for two weeks’ worth of work. The wage for workers like him ranges from N1,500 ($10) to N2,000 ($18) per day. I ask him if he would take a plot of land here if it were offered to him. “I won’t take it,” he says.

“Even if I take it I’ll sell. Maybe after 20 or 30 years the wall will break. I can’t stay here. I’m scared, I have to be honest with you. One day this place might sink or be overrun by water. We see it on TV all the time, [footage from other countries], where floods come and cover entire houses.”

 

Why Lagos Needs Eko Atlantic City

Lagos, which sits in the south-western region of western Nigeria, is a city perpetually on the brink of flooding. Bounded in the South by the Atlantic Ocean, the city is situated on the mainland, home to 70 percent of the city’s population with series of islands and a peninsula that holds the remaining 30 percent. At the heart of the city lies the expansive Lagos Lagoon. Today, if it were a country, Lagos would be Africa’s fifth largest economy – as is, Lagos is Africa’s second largest city. It is one of the fastest growing cities in the world – from a population of 300,000 in 1950 it has grown to some 15 million people. The United Nations predicts that by 2015 it will have a population of over 25 million.

Between 1908 and 1912, British colonial authorities constructed three “moles” or “breakwaters” around Bar Beach, to ease the movement of ships into the Lagos Harbour. These moles disrupted the natural flow of the ocean and set up tidal action that would, over the next century, erode more than one kilometre of Bar Beach coastline. Since the late 1950s there have been several unsuccessful attempts to keep the ocean at bay, by sand-filling. By the turn of the 21st century, the Atlantic had crept dangerously close to the heart of Victoria Island, eventually washing away half of the Ahmadu Bello coastal road.

In December 2005, the government launched the Shoreline Protection Project, which involved the construction of a kilometrelong wall of interlocking concrete blocks and stone. The project was commissioned in 2008 and trumpeted as a decisive victory of man over nature. This same year, Lagos Governor Babatunde Fashola launched an even more daring project – Eko Atlantic City, envisioned as a land reclamation project to restore the Lagos coastline. His predecessor, Bola Tinubu, had in July 2006 granted the concession for the reclamation and development project, including a 78-year lease for the developed land to South Energyx.

A Belgian dredging vessel, the bizarrely named, Congo River, is doing most of the heavy lifting. By the time its work is done, 140 million tonnes of sand would have been dredged from the floor of the Atlantic to create the new city. Three million square kilometres of land have already been reclaimed. When the reclamation is complete in 2015, nine million square kilometres of land will sit where, a decade earlier, the ocean sat, terrafirma for a city one-and-half times the size of adjoining Victoria Island. The dredging and land reclamation is being carried out by Belgian firm Dredging International (DI), while Dutch firm Royal Haskoning designed and is building the Great Wall. Providing architectural services are MZ Architects (with offices in the Middle East and North Africa) and ar+h Architects.

 

Who’s Paying and How Much?

The project’s main funders are three Nigerian banks: First Bank, First City Monument Bank (FCMB) and Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank) – all publicly traded on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. The international bank BNP Paribas is also heavily invested. The balance of the funds needed will come from land sales. None of the funding will come from the government, whose role is limited solely to providing the concession for the project and receiving taxes on the land sales and development. According to South Energyx, 80 percent of Phase 1 has already been sold to private developers – the equivalent of one fifth of the total land mass that will be available.

Eko Atlantic will not be a cheap city in which to live. But, according to a company official, their research has found that Eko Atlantic offers cheaper land, in dollars per square meter, than Banana Island, Ikoyi and Victoria Island – Lagos’ most expensive developments. He pointed out an even more striking advantage: unlike their counterparts across the rest of highbrow Lagos, residents of Eko Atlantic will not have to budget for power generators or boreholes, or worry about organising their own sewage disposal and rigging their own Internet connections.

 

Supporters versus Naysayers

With a price tag of $6 billion, Eko Atlantic is as ambitious as it is controversial. Publicity material describes it as “a city born from the sea”. It has also been touted as the ‘Manhattan’ of West Africa. The project started out as a land reclamation effort but is also publicised as a way of building a Lagos dream. The developers, South Energyx, say it will be home to 250,000 people when completed, with 150,000 commuting in and out for work. Lagos State Governor Fashola speaks of creating a “model megacity for Africa. A city where people can live, work and play”. Marketing material claims that “instead of the claustrophobic city environment of Lagos, Eko Atlantic will provide dramatic views over the Atlantic Ocean, clear, tree-lined streets and open spaces”, and that “instead of the frequent power cuts, water shortages and communications breakdowns that are well known in Lagos, Eko Atlantic will have uninterrupted services.”

But not everyone is sold. “Was VI [Victoria Island] not supposed to be the Manhattan of its day?” asks urban planner Simon Gusah, who runs a consultancy in Abuja, Nigeria. “When did that dream bite the dust? When building codes and standards were flouted? When the infrastructure could no longer cope with growth? What, then, is there about the Eko Atlantic City strategic plan that will ensure this does not happen?” Gusah thinks Eko Atlantic is merely another manifestation of privileged Nigerians’ penchant for snobbishness. “Nigerians are very class-conscious and the gated community, the GRA [Government Reservation Area] colonial hangup is deeply engrained.” Architect Kunle Adeyemi, founder of NLÉ (an architecture, design and urbanism practice for developing cities), thinks that a bridge linking Ikorodu on the Mainland and Epe on the Lekki Peninsula across the lagoon is a more urgent city need. Others, still, cite improving Lagos’s archaic road infrastructure or decongesting traffic by investing in better public transport systems as even more immediate concerns. There is currently no city-wide rail service – a light rain is still being built, almost 30 years after it was first proposed.

Inyang struggles to understand the insistence on claiming land back from water. “There’s plenty of land along Abeokuta road, free from water,” he says about the expanses to the north of the city, on the Lagos mainland. “Why are they not building this there?” It is a good question. Lagos’s islands teem with unoccupied luxury developments, priced out of the reach of all but the city’s richest, while multitudes continue to make do with slums and slum-like housing. The city desperately needs mass low-cost housing away from the Islands and Lekki peninsula. The last ambitious housing programme, comissioned when Lateef Jakande was Governor, is already three decades old. The state government estimates an existing shortage of five million homes, as well as an annual delivery of 200,000 houses to keep up with the population. It recently unveiled a programme to build, over the next two years, 1,000 apartments – a negligible attempt in light of reality.

Journalist Neuwirth is another sceptic. He has spent time living in and researching Lagos, and his second book, Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World, details his experiences living in four squatter communities on four continents. He worries about the “separateness” of developments like Eko Atlantic. “I’m not against rich people having housing but I don’t pretend that it will transform the rest of Lagos.” he tells me. “It doesn’t really constitute development for the masses of people. It’s not going to change the infrastructure on the mainland or the way traffic moves through Apapa. It’s simply one development for a very small percentage of the population.”

 

A Big Dream Needs Big Developers

Eko Atlantic City is plugged as a public-private partnership between the Lagos State Government and the Chagoury Group, which owns South Energyx. The Chagoury Group, with extensive interests in construction, real estate and hospitality, among other areas, was founded by brothers Gilbert and Ronald Chagoury. Gilbert, born in 1946 in Lagos, to Lebanese migrant parents, is the oldest of eight siblings. Together with younger brother Ronald he founded the Chagoury Group in 1971. He gained prominence in the early 1990s as a close friend of Nigeria’s military dictator Sani Abacha, and member of his circle of financial advisers and fixers. Philip Vasset, a French journalist and Chief Editor of the newsletter Africa Energy Intelligence, has described him as “the gatekeeper to Abacha’s presidency”.

Gilbert Chagoury’s knack for building high-profile relationships is legendary. He is also a close friend of Bill Clinton. In a fundraising document released by the Clinton Foundation in December 2008, Chagoury was listed in the class of donors who contributed between $1 million and $5 million. His closeness to Abacha won his construction companies several high-profile contracts in the 1990s, including Nigeria’s National Assembly Complex, the Nigerian Defence Academy, and the Federal Secretariat in Abuja. In the 1990s, the Chagoury Group, in partnership with the Federal Government of Nigeria, also developed a mass of land adjoining Ikoyi, named Banana Island. Property prices in Banana Island are the highest in Lagos, already one of the most expensive cities in the world.

Over the last decade, the Chagoury family has enjoyed a closeness to Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Lagos’s former Governor, and the most influential politician in southwestern Nigeria. HITECH, one of the construction firms in the Chagoury Group, is responsible for the Lekki-Epe Expressway, arguably the most ambitious construction project in Lagos since the Third Mainland Bridge, which opened in 1991 and which connects Ikoyi to the mainland.

 

Environmental Consideration

In September 2009, Eko Atlantic City was awarded a “Commitment Certificate” by the Clinton Globa lnitiative. The certificate recognises “commitments” by members of the Initiative, who create and implement innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges.

According to the Foundation citation, “South Energyx commits to combating the devastating effects of climate change by reclaiming nine square kilometres of land for a new city, Eko Atlantic. Eko Atlantic will be an environmentally conscious city, built with nature, to restore an original coastline and protect Victoria Island, Nigeria from the severe risk of ocean surge and flooding.”

Environmental activist Ako Amadi, a former Executive Director of the Nigerian Conservation Fund, is sceptical about this claim. “The whole of Lekki [peninsula] used to be wetlands, which helped to mitigate ocean surges,” he tells me. “The loss of the wetlands is not the fault of the government or the builders of Eko Atlantic, but a new city is not going to mitigate things on a sustainable level.”

There have also been demands for the city’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) documents to be made public. Some observers have attempted to link the reclamation to the alarming rate at which water levels are rising in Lagos, a claim Fashola himself has debunked. “The insinuation that the Eko Atlantic City project is the cause of the floods is untrue. It is an uninformed and erroneous view,” the Governor told Channels Television in July 2012. In May this year, South Energyx and the Lagos state government called a press conference to address concerns about the non-availability of an EIA. “The Eko Atlantic Project has completed a full and comprehensive Environmental and Social Impact Assessment on the entire land reclamation works and its sea wall protection, as required under the Nigerian Environmental Impact Assessment Act No. 86 of 1992,” newspaper reports quoted an official of Dutch marine engineering firm, Royal Haskoning, which conducted the assessment, as saying. “The EIA has been carried out in accordance with these regulations.” Around this same time, the CEO of South Energyx, David Frame, said to me, “We have approval from the Federal Ministry of Environment on our EIA.” But Amadi argues that an EIA is not something you do when you’ve started construction. “They started dredging in 2009 and are presenting an EIA in 2012,” Amadi says. “The EIA should have been done around 2008.” He adds that an EIA is a document that “costs money”, and because it is issued by a government ministry, “there are many ways of getting around [it]. It can be waived or fast-tracked.”

 

Work as Usual

The concerns have done nothing to affect the pace of work on the site, or the ongoing scramble for Eko Atlantic. Every day as many as 300 trucks feed the Great Wall of Lagos with rock quarried from Benin and Oyo. And South Energyx says the first developer is already constructing the foundation of what will be a 24-storey residential tower. First Bank, one of the key funders of the project, already has plans to build its new headquarters – more than 50 storeys tall – at Eko Atlantic. “I am inundated almost on a weekly basis by people wanting to prepay, and if there’s any barometer at all about how people feel about it, about how expectant they are about it, it is this huge demand that we want to live there,” said Fashola, in a publicity video for Eko Atlantic City. Inyang corroborates this. “That place that is water,” he told me, pointing towards the stretch of water behind us, “It’s already been sold.” The amusement in his voice is easy to discern. He tells me a story of a client who paid for a plot of land and showed up to discover that his piece of real estate still lay beneath the Atlantic. “When they show you on the drawing, you can’t tell that it’s water. It’s when you come to take a look that you realise its ocean [you bought].”

 

The Changing Face of Lagos

But that “ocean” – the part closest to us – is fast disappearing. In another few years it will be all gone, sand-filled. Along with it will go Bar Beach, famous in the seventies and eighties for concerts, and public executions of drug barons, armed robbers and coup plotters. Today it is a favourite of horse-riding revellers, roller-skaters, kite-surfers, open-air barbecuejoints, white-garment churches, and young couples. Soon, in its place will be a stretch of prime real estate; a mass of high-rises, multi-level carparks, shopping promenades, luxury hotels, boulevards, Venice-style canals and luxury boats.

As a city, Lagos continues to generate significant interest in the global cultural and business imagination. Foreign journalists troop in to write about its startling contradictions and its ambitious plans to master the mayhem that has been its single most defining character for as long as many of its residents can remember. The state government now has plans for seven rail lines (one of them, the “blue line” is already under construction), to take pressure off the city’s perpetually jammed roads. In addition it plans to build 28 “sustainable activity centres”, each of which will incorporate a business district next to residential development, so that Lagosians will no longer have to travel far for work. A new airport and Free Trade Zone are planned for Lekki, as are new Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) routes across the city.

Individuals are also hard at work, sometimes in curious ways. Architect Kunle Adeyemi’s focus is a riverine slum regeneration project that he describes as “the antithesis of land reclamation”. In his words, it is about “trying to make Lagos a water-city, like Venice. The centre of Lagos is a large body of water. Can we develop an aqua-culture for the heart of the city, its transportation, housing?” I interpret that to mean making Lagos comfortable in its co-existence with water; as opposed to the current scenario playing out at Eko Atlantic City, where water seems to be regarded as an enemy to be subdued with sand.

When I finally leave Lawrence Inyang it is dusk. He is now seated within the pipe-molding warehouse, eating the rice he cooked and listening to a transistor radio. I begin the long walk back to Bar Beach. In the distance, Lagos – more often than not a black hole when viewed from the air at night – is an uplifting landscape of dotted lights. In no time I am sucked back into the madness of Victoria Island’s beaches – the barbecue joints and beer tables, the touts and prostitutes. Life continues in Lagos, as it will through the night on the giant construction site that is Eko Atlantic. There will no doubt be many waiting to see if Lagos has finally won a decisive battle with the ocean and in the process brought economic prosperity and a higher standard of living to its citizens, or whether Eko Atlantic City is nothing more than an assortment of castles built on sinking sand.

http://www.ventures-africa.com/2012/11/eko-atlantic-city-a-mammoth-new-development-on-the-coastline-of-lagos/

bushwailo, Time registered: December 15, 2011.

Still, you've got no iota of brain.
It's over for you

I think these Caucasians should start to respect the Negros
Just like my signature

http://m.yahoo.com/w/legobpengine/news/white-house-race-goes-down-wire-002342258--business.html?orig_host_hdr=news.yahoo.com&.intl=US&.lang=en-US

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama won a second term in the White House on Tuesday, overcoming deep doubts among voters about his handling of the U.S. economy to score a clear victory over Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

Americans chose to stick with a divided government in Washington, by keeping the Democratic incumbent in the White House and leaving the U.S. Congress as it is, with Democrats controlling the Senate and Republicans keeping the House of Representatives.

Obama told thousands of supporters in Chicago who cheered his every word that "we have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back" and that for America, the best is yet to come.

He vowed to listen to both sides of the political divide in the weeks ahead and said he would return to the White House more determined than ever to confront America's challenges.

"Whether I earned your vote or not, I have listened to you, I have learned from you. And you have made me a better president," Obama said.

The nationwide popular vote remained extremely close with Obama taking about 50 percent to 49 percent for Romney after a campaign in which the candidates and their party allies spent a combined $2 billion.




Romney, the multimillionaire former private equity executive, came back from a series of campaign stumbles to make it close after besting the president in the first of three presidential debates.

The 65-year-old former Massachusetts governor conceded in a gracious speech delivered to disappointed supporters at the Boston convention center. He had called Obama to concede defeat after a brief controversy over whether the president had really won Ohio.

"This is a time of great challenge for our nation," Romney told the crowd. "I pray that the president will be successful in guiding our nation."

He warned against partisan bickering and urged politicians on both sides to "put the people before the politics."

Obama told his crowd that he hoped to sit down with Romney in the weeks ahead and examine ways to meet the challenges ahead.

The president Obama scored impressive victories in the crucial state of Ohio and heavily contested swing states of Virginia, Nevada, Iowa and Colorado. They carried the Democrat past the 270 electoral votes needed for victory in America's state-by-state system of choosing a president, and left Romney's senior advisers shell-shocked at the loss.

Obama, America's first black president, won by convincing voters to stick with him as he tries to reignite strong economic growth and recover from the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. An uneven recovery has been showing some signs of strength but the country's 7.9 percent jobless rate remains stubbornly high.

Obama's victory in the hotly contested swing state of Ohio - as projected by TV networks - was a major step in the fight for the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the White House and ended Romney's hopes of pulling off a string of swing-state upsets.

Obama scored narrow wins in Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire - all states that Romney had contested - while the only swing state captured by Romney was North Carolina, according to television network projections.

Romney initially delayed his concession as some Republicans questioned whether Obama had in fact won Ohio despite the decisions by election experts at all the major TV networks to declare it for the president.

The later addition of Colorado and Virginia to Obama's tally - according to network projections - meant that even if the final result from Ohio were to be reversed, Romney still could not reach the needed number of electoral votes.

While Obama supporters in Chicago were ecstatic, Romney's Boston event was grim as the news was announced on television screens there. A steady stream of people left the ballroom at the Boston convention center.

THE SAME PROBLEMS

At least 120 million American voters had been expected to cast votes in the race between the Democratic incumbent and Romney after a campaign that was focused on how to repair the ailing U.S. economy.

The same problems that dogged Obama in his first term are still there to confront him again.

He faces a difficult task of tackling $1 trillion annual deficits, reducing a $16 trillion national debt, overhauling expensive social programs and dealing with a gridlocked U.S. Congress that kept the same partisan makeup.

Obama's Democrats held their Senate majority - taking hotly contested Republican-held seats in Massachusetts and Indiana - while the Republicans kept House control.

Democrat Claire McCaskill retained her U.S. Senate seat from Missouri, beating Republican congressman Todd Akin, who stirred controversy with his comment in August that women's bodies could ward off pregnancy in cases of "legitimate rape.

Democrats gained a Senate seat in Indiana that had been in Republican hands for decades after Republican candidate Richard Mourdock called pregnancy from rape something that God intended. Democratic congressman Joe Donnelly won the race.

In another high-profile Senate race, Democrat Elizabeth Warren, a law professor who headed the watchdog panel that oversaw the government's financial sector bailout, defeated incumbent Massachusetts Republican Senator Scott Brown.

Former Maine Governor Angus King won a three-way contest for the Senate seat of retiring Republican Olympia Snowe. King ran as an independent, but he is expected to caucus with Democrats in what would amount to a Democratic pick-up.

Florida Democratic Senator Bill Nelson easily beat back a challenge from Republican congressman Connie Mack to win a third term, while Democratic congressman Chris Murphy beat Republican Linda McMahon, a businesswoman who had served as chief executive of a professional wrestling company.

Democrats were also cheered by several state referendums. Maryland voters approved same-sex marriage, the governor said, and a similar measure in Maine appeared on track to pass as well - marking the first time marriage rights have been extended to same-sex couples by popular vote.

In addition, Wisconsin Democratic congresswoman Tammy Baldwin became the first openly gay U.S. Senator, defeating Republican former governor Tommy Thompson.

(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason in Chicago, Patricia Zengerle in Boston, Edith Honan in New York, Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee, Dave Warner in Philadelphia, Philip Barbara in New Jersey, Matt Spetalnick, Lisa Lambert, Susan Heavey, Thomas Ferraro, Susan Cornwell, Anna Yukhananov and Roberta Rampton in Washington; Writing by Steve Holland and John Whitesides; Editing by Claudia Parsons and Will Dunham)

ikeyman00: ^^^^ at least thats aint as bad as walking around with ur monkey face coupled with some hallowen tiger mark on top of ur make-down

so which one would u rather have?

Bros you don take am p.


Let me give you this uncertain illustration,
The cat marks are done by the ancient barbaric mind of the old men . It's man made, you can decide not to do this to your kids.

But as for hairy chest ladies ol boy, that one has been in the Igbo generation ever since creation.
It's natural
The best you can do is to by a clipper for your daughter or you take her to a barber shop frequently.
It's in your blood, and it'll be passed from generation to generation.

My 2cent?

But we yoruba ladies ain't hairy on our chest like our sis from the East

How come?!