By Funke Oduwole
For years, Lagos State government battled the raging ocean upsurge that threatened to eat up the entire Victoria Island and won the war against the waves. This gave birth to the idea to maximise the opportunity presented by the reclaimed land in the face of the incredibly low land availability in the state to create Eko Atlantic City. David Frame, managing director, South Energyx Nigeria Limited, the developers and city planners said the pace of growth in Lagos puts pressure on resources. “Development land is scarce, prices are steep and infrastructure is overloaded. Eko Atlantic will relieve that pressure,” he assured.
For a fact, the Eko Atlantic City project would boost both social and economic development with great potential of providing jobs for individuals in various strata of the society as professionals, unskilled labour and artisans would have the opportunity of working together in an organised city. Town planning experts believe that this would be possible only if the master plan was religiously followed. “If there is disruption and the construction is halted, they might derail from the master plan and the end result might be catastrophic,” Shola Hassan, a town planner told the magazine.
Stakeholders raise fears of the possibility of a renewed ocean surge that could consume the city, but Tunji Olayiwola, a structural engineer dispelled this fear explaining that it is called marine or bay construction. “It is done all over the world. We have something like that in Venice, Italy, a city of about 93 kilometres with all necessary amenities like hotels, shopping malls, cinemas clubs and all sorts in place. This is the first of its kind in Nigeria and I`m sure it has been designed to withstand the fierce tide,” he said. Frame also allayed the fear when he said it is a masterpiece of engineering designed to meet the highest international specifications and to withstand the worst imaginable Atlantic storm.
The N416.5 billion project will be actualised within a period of six years in three phases comprising reclamation, fortification and construction. The new city which will occupy about nine square metres development area, seven kilometres in length and 60 metres wide at the base level where the force of ocean is greatest, will tower nine metres above sea level. A 21st century city where investment in homes, businesses and tourism will flourish, Frame said Eko Atlantic will be similar to that of the skyscraper district of Manhattan Island, New York City.
Preparing the state to meet the challenge of the projection of international demographers and United Nations` forecast that Lagos would become a city state of 25 million people by the year 2015, Governor Babatunde Fashola saw the project as an ambitious plan to improve Lagos and boost the economy. Spurning the challenges of nature, the state government is harnessing its policy on environment to form a critical synergy of public and private sector for the benefit of the people.
Describing it as an excellent urban planning concept, Fashola said it is a city of many things in one that will create job opportunities for so many other sectors. He stated categorically that he was persuaded that it would be of immense benefit both to the state and the people. “This is why I have seamlessly taken it up as my baby to give birth to it, “the governor stressed.
On completion, Eko Atlantic City, an environmentally conscious development, will boast of some of the finest development properties in West Africa and will be home to 250,000 people with over 150,000 people commuting to work there daily. While Bola Tinubu, former governor, who created the blue print for the development described it as “a vision that came out of a scary story of disaster”, Frame said it is a project that has converted an impending disaster into a valuable asset for the future.
Experts in the built environment have however expressed mixed feelings about the successful implementation of the proposed city evolving from the reclaimed land on the Bar Beach shore line on Victoria Island which promises to set a new standard for living and working in West Africa. Eniola Olaleye, an architect, who described the initiative as laudable, especially as it is a public private partnership, raised fear that political antics might derail the master plan and what was designed to be an organised city of comfort might end up becoming a city of chaos.
“The frosty political terrain occasioned by the intra-party friction in the ruling party in Lagos might end up affecting this project. It might hamper the successful implementation of the project and what we expected to be economic gain might end up becoming huge economic waste,” Olaleye told the magazine. “Such project is better implemented in a congenial atmosphere of policy continuity and stable political terrain. This is where the economic potential of such project can be fully explored and exploited,” he explained.
While some are not well disposed to the idea in the light of the unfolding political d drama between the initiators Fashola and his predecessor, Tinubu, some industry operators look beyond the bourgeoning feud to see the immense economic prospect of the project. Eddie Nwajei, business development manager, Builders Trust Nigeria Limited, sees the project as a good initiative that would tremendously improve living standard and consolidate the state`s mega city status.
“It reminds me of Abu Dhabi Hotel in Dubai, where you have a complete city of about five kilometres right on top of the ocean and also in China where a rail line passes right under the ocean,” Nwajei, observed. He alluded to the fact that Lagos, with this project, is trying to move with global development pattern in line with its goal of becoming Africa`s model mega city. “It will surely scale up economic activities and elevate standard in the property development industry both in Lagos and in Nigeria as a whole,” he stressed.
With the array of private sector partners like First Bank of Nigeria, First City Monument Bank, GTBank and Royal Haskoning, group of renown architects and engineers from The Netherlands, there is no doubt that the Atlantic city will be of immense economic benefit as it will make the nation proud as a developing nation and raised the stakes in the state`s property market, according to industry experts, if actualised, but the fact remains that the implementation might be distorted by policy inconsistency and political in-fighting going on in the state.
Frame: Eko Atlantic will relieve pressure
Hassan: Wants master plan followed to the letter
Olayiwola: Dispels fear of ocean surge
Tinubu: Initiated the blue print
Fashola: Actualising a dream
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