Lekki now recipe for chaos

Lekki now recipe for chaos




Craze for waterfronts


VICTORIA Garden City (VGC) developed by Messrs HFP Engineering Nigeria Ltd prides itself as “Paradise by the Lagoon.” The luxurious estate was the first of its kind in Nigeria and the first private sector-developed estate in the Lekki Peninsula area of Lagos.

VGC is the product of the Lagos State Government’s private estate development scheme flagged off in 1992. The government that year, allocated parcels of land to twelve private estate development companies to build housing estates to provide decent shelter for the teeming homeless Lagosians.

Prior to the development of the VGC, the water-logged Lekki axis was shunned by property investors due mainly to the huge financial outlay required to build in such marshy areas. Apart from HFP which took the bull by the horn and built VGC, other allottes of the scheme failed to come off the ground.
Today, however, the story has changed as the craze to live near the waterfronts has led to the springing up of no fewer than 40 residential estates in the Lekki-Ajah neighbourhood.

The teeming population which was not envisaged in the regional master-plan has led to the dearth or overuse of existing infrastructure (good network of roads and water among others). Only the Lagos -Epe Expressway serves the growing neigbourhood and this has led to perennial traffic bottlenecks on that route. Last year, when a prominent Lagos businessman hosted a lavish party in his expansive castle, Lekki commuters had a hellish time as many of them allegedly slept on the road.

Besides the residential estates that adorn the Lekki landscape, a lot of corporate organisations have also begun to relocate their head offices to the area. A popular transport company that plies mainly the eastern parts of the country, is one of such companies. The absence of regular markets to take care of the domestic requirements of most households in the area has forced some of them to do their shopping in either Lagos Island or the mainland.
Mrs. Stella Amadi who lives in the mainland but works in Lekki complained bitterly about the pains she goes through on daily basis. According to her, “I leave my house very early in the morning and still arrive the office late due to the choking traffic hold-up. I also get back to my house around 10 pm almost on a daily basis although I close officially for the day at 6.00p.m”, she lamented.

Recipe for disaster

For Mr. Osita Okoli, a frontline Lagos-based estate surveyor and valuer, ongoing developments in the Lekki axis portend grave dangers for the environment.

“We have a recipe for disaster on our hands already. I live in Lekki and know that I dreaded moving to Lekki from my former residence in Ikoyi for the simple reason of the traffic. Having lived in Lekki for about three years now, I know that it takes sometimes longer to get from Lekki to my office on Lagos Island than it takes somebody coming from Lagos Mainland (Surulere or Yaba) to get to Lagos Island,” he said.

Mr. Okoli who is the Secretary of the International Real Estate Federation (FIABCI) and a past National Publicity Secretary of the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV), regretted that the Lagos State Government was sufficiently warned about the dangers of mass movement to the area but it (government) failed to heed the warning.

“Government was sufficiently warned. Experts provided advice and commentaries on the matter.You might want to know that there has been a long standing plan to build a coastal road linking most of the coastlines not just in Nigeria but even with other countries in West Africa”, he said.
He called for the construction of an alternative route to the Lekki Expressway, near the site for the proposed coastal road.

“That will have an immense impact on bringing down the traffic that flows from Lekki and Epe and the places beyond it. The government’s plan to build connecting bridges from Lekki or Langbasa and such other places, to the mainland will be another solution, but that is far-fetched because I understand that such bridges will not be ready until about ten years. Ten years? That place would have assumed unmanageable dimensions.

Another Lagos-based realtor, Mr. Stephen Jagun said he lives in Surulere because he is not prepared to go through the hassles of coming to his office on Lagos Island from the Lekki Peninsula.
“I understand that there are about 45 approved estates on that axis alone. The major problem with that area is the fact that only a single road links it with other parts of Lagos. It is always chaotic driving out of Lekki in the morning hours or returning in the evening. To compound the problem, erosion is gradually eating up the road thereby making the traffic congestion almost unbearable”, he observed.

He disclosed that private estate developers in the axis and the Eti-osa Local Government Area are presently collaborating to build a coastal road that will reduce the flow of traffic on the major road.
A former National Publicity Secretary of the Nigerian Institute of Town Planners (NITP), Mr. Moses Ogunleye, observed that the major problem in the North-East axis (Lekki) is the lack of coordination among the government development agencies charged with the responsibility of ensuring orderly development of the new neighbourhood.
The agencies charged with the provision of physical infrastructure are the New Towns Development Authority (NTDA) and the Lagos State Development and Property Corporation (LSDPC).

Ogunleye who explained that Lekki phases 1 and 2 have layout plans guiding government development efforts in the areas, noted that the numerous private estates there also have planning approvals hence the government allowed them to develop the estates.
“The greatest challenge facing Lekki is the fact that development is going on bit by bit. There is no global (holistic) plan for the north- east axis.”
According to him, under the proposed Regional Plan for the entire area, Lekki axis was zoned into three uses - housing, agriculture and tourism.

“Nobody is doing the coordination. Both the NTDA and LSDPC are working in the Lekki corridor but nobody seems to be coordinating the developments. For instance, plots of land zoned to housing are being used for tourism and nobody is checking this ugly trend.”
Continuing, Mr. Ogunleye who is the Managing Director of Beachland Resources Ltd, declared: “You can change value vis-a-vis the existing development plan but that change must come through thorough design as a result of a study or research finding.”
The former NITP image maker decried the non-construction of the coastal road proposed in the Regional Plan to reduce the flow of traffic in the area.

Said he: “If time is not taken, the whole Lekki area will become a dormitory because people are only interested in building housing estates. There will be chaos in the development pattern of the area and we are already experiencing it. Apart from housing estates, there should be work places and industrial/ commercial areas in Lekki,” he said.
“Every development should evolve based on a master-plan. If somebody says he wants to develop a school, university or hospital in an area, you should not just allocate land to him for that purpose because it is a development. You must check the plan for that area to ensure that such projects are accommodated in the master- plan,” he said.
The settlement expert who noted the influx of high network citizens to the new investors have called on the government to come up with alternative plans to check the suffering of residents of the area who are usually trapped in heavy traffic jams for hours on daily basis.

“Government is making a lot of money from Lekki. The value of land there is appreciating on daily basis. It (Lekki) is a prime area that should be treated by the government with prime urgency,” he said.
Mr. Ogunleye counselled private estate developers to “diffuse development in sectors. Everybody should not just be thinking of building along that single expressway. Development of workplaces like hotels, hospitals and offices should not be concentrated along the road”, he said.

Solution to the problem

On how to solve the problem of congestion in the area, Mr. Okoli who noted that a road is being constructed from Ligali Ayorinde on Victoria Island through Oniru Estate, to Lekki Phase 1 Roundabout, noted that it will only reduce traffic on that road minimally.

“There is an aspect that the government has not even bothered to exploit. It was very effectively used by the government in the past. The water transportation routes. Lagos is immensely blessed with waterways. Ferries can be designed and procured for the movement of the people. You can even have vessels that can move cars across the creeks from Lekki or Victoria Island to Osborne or Ikoyi or Mainland or Apapa or wherever. You will find that a lot of people will subscribe to this. Certainly, most people who want to go to work in Ikoyi or Obalende or Lagos Island will find it faster to cross the creek at that point and then take a bus to continue their journey."

Continuing, the outspoken realtor said, “there is no reason why the government cannot provide an integrated system of transportation. When I talk of integrated, I mean harnessing both the waterways and the road network. You can have a system of buses such as the transit buses networking Victoria Island and Ikoyi and Lagos Island. You can link that up with the waterways so that some people can take ferries and have buses to take others. If you do that, you discover that a lot of people who go to work with their cars everyday will not even bother especially with the high cost of fuel.”
Should government stop further allocation of land to private developers in Lekki? Mr. Okoli said that would be a defeatist way to attack the problem.

“If government stops allocation, people will buy land from the natives and still develop. You cannot stop development. What they should do is to channel and modify developments, provide infrastructure and probably finance people who want to develop. It would be unwise for government to stop allocating land. They should, however, let the allocation go simultaneously with articulated plans to meet the demands of development,” he said.
Aware of the multi-faceted problems facing residents of Lekki Peninsula, the Lagos State Government last month said it will in the next three months, flag off the construction of the coastal road and expansion of the existing Lagos-Epe Expressway.

The Deputy Governor, Mr. Femi Pedro who spoke while commissioning Golden Park Estate at Sango Tedo said the government will also build a fourth mainland bridge in the area.
President of the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV), Chief Charles Adebiyi believes that when these schemes eventually take off, the problems faced by Lekki residents and visitors will be ameliorated.
But his deputy, Chief Dosu Fatokun insists that articulated planning would have saved the neighbourhood the decay it is currently going through by the provision of adequate infrastructure from the onset.