Last week, Director-General of the Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF), Muhtari Aminu-Kano, warned that erosion might soon wipe off Lekki reservation centre in Lagos.
He urged the government to save the reserve before the situation gets worse, nothing that the development the developments have already caused damage evident in the various animals and plants killed and endangered in the process.
“This is one of the only few places where you have dense population of trees and animals and what that means is that all the buildings around us have raised the land above us so, we are now in a depression”
According to Mr. Aminu, the reclamation of the land around the area for sand filling activities have directly affected the park and may soon result in visible damage.
“When the rains come, all the water drains into this reserve. So we have a lot of flooding and areas that are not normally flooded are now flooded”. While the water is a manageable problem “We have, however, done a study and we are trying to improve the drainage without disturbing the natural ecosystem”, he noted Beach erosion as another urgent threat.
He said that due to the ongoing protection of the Bar Beach shoreline coupled with the development projects around Maroko and Lekki, what used to be beach erosion is now a general Lagos problem.
Considering the gravity of this threat, he urged authorities to act fast in order to manage the threat, “Our appeal is not just for us alone but all the communities around us living or deriving their livelihoods from this area’’
He said that the NCF was also speaking to researchers and other interests on ways to explore the biodiversity of the reserve.