Lagos, Nigeria – As a child growing up in Akodo-Ise, Kadiri Malik would pass a boulevard of coconut trees on his way down to the shore with his father to start the fishing day.
The two would walk, sometimes hand in hand, past lush vegetation before settling down to gather a bountiful harvest of fish. But that’s now a distant memory in the coastal village in Nigeria’s Lagos.
“This place used to be very beautiful,” the 40-year-old fisherman laments, sitting on the verandah of his house from where he can see the ocean in its blue, choppy glory. “[Now] all the coconut trees are no more, they have been taken by the water. The ocean used to be very far away, but now it is just a stone’s throw from us.”
The coconut belt used to be part of a scenic shoreline that brought economic gains for the fishing community and served as a natural buffer against the weather and natural disasters. But now, thousands of trees have been swallowed by the ocean.
Globally, coastal communities are grappling with the consequences of rising sea levels brought on by worsening climate change. Villages along Nigeria’s 853km (530-mile) coastline are no different, battling extreme weather events and accelerated sea level rise. Among the worst hit is Akodo-Ise, as it loses land to ocean encroachment.
Every day, Malik carries a heavy thought in his mind – that it is only a matter of time before the ocean surges and coastal erosion destroys everyone’s homes, handicaps the economy and washes away important community landmarks for good.
‘We do not have rest of mind’
The fishermen suffer the most.
Most of the violent ocean surges happen at night while people are asleep. The morning after, fisherfolk often find their boats and nets are gone.
“We the fishermen in this area do not have rest of mind at all … Before we know it, we have lost some properties like our net, our engine, boat,” says Malik, who has taken to dragging his boat close to the house and keeping his engine indoors. “It is always too late before we’d wake up to try and save our net and boat engines.”
In the past year, the community has lost more than 30 boats, 25 boat engines, and 50 bundles of net.
“This is our only source of income,” says Malik, whose family includes his wife, two children, two brothers and an aged mother – all of whom he must support. “If we don’t go to sea, how can we feed our family?”
Last year, he had made more than 500,000 naira ($300) in monthly profits by September, but he says this year his income has depleted as he has been making fewer trips to reduce the chances of losing his boat.
Finding a fair catch also takes more effort nowadays.
In the past, fishermen could fish nearby; now, with the rougher seas, they must travel further, consuming more fuel.
“In the past, we could use five to 10 litres [2.64 gallons] for a round trip, but now we use 35 to 40 litres [9.3 to 10.6 gallons],” Malik says.
Fuel is also more costly than it used to be since President Bola Tinubu removed a petrol subsidy upon taking office last year. A litre (0.26 gallons) of petrol that used to cost 165 naira ($0.10) last May now sells for 1100 naira ($0.65).
‘Beyond repair’
Standing by the shore, Johnson Igbokoyi helps his friends who have been out fishing pull in their boats, though he has not been to sea in more than three weeks as he bides time for a calmer ocean.
“You can fish today and tomorrow – then the day after that, your boat is destroyed. Then you start looking for money to buy a new one or mend it if it is not beyond repair,” says the 49-year-old father of two.
He has lost more than five boats to the ocean, most recently in July. Every time he has lost a boat, he has been able to find money for a new one, but now, he has no savings left.
For assistance, he took to a cooperative society – an organised monetary contribution scheme popular among working-class people in Nigeria – to borrow 3 million naira ($1,772) for a boat and a pre-owned engine. Every week, he must pay 10,000 naira ($6) to the cooperative until he repays the loan.
Rising inflation, currently at 32.7 percent, has also compounded his woes; previously, the same engine cost 700,000 naira ($414) but is now 2.5 million naira ($1,477). Brand new ones go for as high as 3.8 million naira ($2,245). Fishing nets also cost 85,000 naira ($50), up from 30,000 naira ($18).
“I do not have money should something happen,” Igbokoyi laments, saying his wife has also been struggling to adjust as she is unable to buy many of the things the family needs. “After the loan has been repaid, we can go back to the way we were living,” he says.
Like most fishermen in Akodo-Ise, Igbokoyi feels he cannot change careers. “This is the job passed down to me by my ancestors so I cannot just leave it for something else now. I did not even go to school at all; what career can I start now?” he asks.
Some 80 percent of African coastal communities depend on nature for their livelihoods, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Meanwhile, other local fishermen, like Kadiri Suluka, have faced more than just financial disaster. Last year, he and a coworker were out at sea when waves slammed against his boat and broke it into pieces. He feared he was going to die as the boat sank quickly.
“[We] could have died but we were spared. We swam back to shore because we had not gone very far,” says Suluka.
Now, with Suluka unable to work and his savings depleted, his family survives on charity. Sometimes colleagues give him fish or money and he also buys food on credit.
“The only thing it has not taken from me is my life,” he says with a sigh.
Development accelerating climate change?
On the road leading to Akodo-Ise, once-full mangrove forests are also depleting quickly – more evidence of the escalating climate disaster.
Less than 30 minutes up the road, there is the Lekki free trade zone, the Dangote oil refinery – the seventh-largest in the world – and the Lekki deep sea port, all grand economic ventures that signal the bubbling economic pulse of the area. But some of these projects have been accused of accelerating the climate challenges in nearby communities.
Lateef Shittu, the village chieftain, told Al Jazeera many problems started at about the time construction of the Dangote refinery began in 2004, and that dredging activities have forced water to push against their village.
Experts say the claims from Akodo-Ise about the effect of dredging and large-scale developments on its coastline are grounded in scientific evidence and observable impacts.
These projects “disrupt sediment flow along the coast, destabilising the shoreline and making it more vulnerable to erosion”, Adenike Adesemolu, the director of The Green Institute, a Lagos-based sustainability think tank, told Al Jazeera.
Dredging, in particular, can be highly destructive to coastal stability, she explained. By removing large amounts of sand and sediment from the seabed, dredging prevents the natural replenishment of beaches. When waves strike the shore, they need that sand as a barrier to dissipate their energy. Without it, waves hit the coastline harder, leading to faster erosion and violent sea incursions. This leaves the community defenceless against the sea’s natural force.
Large construction also alters the natural landscape by creating imbalances in water flow and wave patterns. Construction along the coast redirects waves which causes sediments to pile up, unevenly amplifying the risk of flooding, intensified erosion and violent sea incursions in nearby communities.
“We cannot ask them to stop developmental activities but they must have known it could have this kind of effect and they should have made provisions to cushion its impact on us,” Chieftain Shittu says.
Al Jazeera reached out to the Dangote refinery and the commissioner for waterfront communities to respond to the claims, but did not receive a reply.
Jenty Ibrahim, vice chairman of the local youth association, said young people – who make up the bulk of the fishermen – have tried to write letters to the authorities and have met with the Dangote refinery and the deep sea port to no avail. They have also held protests that have yet to yield any change.
With the future of fishing uncertain, many are turning to bricklaying or carpentry as professions out of desperation, Ibrahim says,” to make some money so they can feed [their families]”.
Chukwumerije Okereke, the director of the Centre for Climate Change and Development at Alex Ekwueme Federal University, told Al Jazeera that “the government has to learn to rise up and protect the livelihoods of these people and put up measures that can help to cushion the impact of the erosion on the local people.”
‘Heartbreaking’
Forty-five-year-old Oluwaseyi Obadiya and her family have been in dire straits recently. An ocean surge in September destroyed their wooden home, spoiled her fisherman husband’s boat, ruined her kitchen and nearly drowned her daughter.
To earn money, her husband would catch fish and she would smoke some of it to sell at the weekly market. But since her husband cannot work, she has been out of business too.
With their home also gone, she found a room in a nearby house to rent until the family could figure out their next steps while living off meagre savings.
“We eat so little in a day and I no longer ask the children if they are satisfied, I only make sure they have eaten something however small,” she says. “They [children] complain of stomach ache but it is because they are hungry, not because they are sick.”
Shittu, the village chieftain, was another victim of the ocean surge in September, which cracked open half his house. He was out of town and someone called him in the middle of the night to inform him. He begged them to break down his door and salvage his essentials, but half the appliances, as well as vital documents, were destroyed by the water.
Now he and his wife can no longer live in their home and are temporarily staying in a room in Malik’s house.
“It is really heartbreaking for me. I used to be a homeowner and now I am living in somebody else’s house,” the chieftain says. “When issues happen in the community, they bring it to me to settle and now I don’t have a home to entertain the issues any more.
“Our people cannot sleep with both eyes closed; they are always anxious [that] something might happen.”
Not even the dead have been spared in Akodo-Ise. The coastal erosion washed away some of the graves in the village, leaving relatives without a memorial to honour their deceased.
Many have since started reburying their dead in locations safe from erosion. However, culturally, it is a delicate and sometimes costly process. According to Yoruba traditions, the family must kill an animal as part of a sacrifice and reburying ceremony.
In most cases, the family buys a ram or goat to be used in the reburying ritual. But many cannot afford it – with some buying sweets and biscuits as substitutes.
Chieftain Shittu is one of those who has had to rebury the remains of a relative.
“My grandfather died in 1956, I was not even born then but I have had to dig his grave and rebury him,” he says. “With which mouth will we say we can no longer find the graves of our forefathers?”
Future ‘in jeopardy’
Though resilient, the community is helpless in the face of an ocean coming very quickly to take everything they know and love, said Doyinsola Ogunye, a coastal restoration expert who has been working to highlight the community’s plight.
“The future of this community, if nothing is done to support and help to rebuild, is in jeopardy. I don’t think the children will have anywhere to live or learn. The school is being overturned by the encroachment of the sea,” she said.
The school building, shared with four nearby communities, has leaky roofs, the floors are damaged and there is discolouration on the parts more exposed to the water.
Meanwhile, Akodo-Ise’s plight is spreading across Lagos, with different parts of the city battling climate disasters such as flooding. In October, the government said Lagos is sinking and might be uninhabitable by the end of this century as experts warned that the sea level may rise faster than earlier said.
Okereke of the Centre for Climate Change and Development said the climate issues Lagos faces are due to bad planning, mismanagement, lack of efficient drainage systems and human refusal to respect the ocean.
Adesemolu of The Green Institute believes “it’s the result of unchecked development that overlooks the vulnerability of communities dependent on these lands.”
According to the World Bank, up to 70 percent of the world’s sandy beaches are expected to erode significantly by 2100 if current coastal practices continue, and 100 million people worldwide may face displacement by 2050 due to climate-related erosion.
Experts say reversing this damage requires urgent action: strategic environmental management, better regulation of dredging activities, and development that protects – rather than harms – coastal ecosystems.
Local-based approaches, such as mangrove restoration and planting, should be prioritised by the government, Okereke feels.
Akinsemolu agrees, adding that climate education sessions should be held for people in coastal areas, and the government should invest in community-specific early warning systems and emergency preparedness to help people safeguard their homes.
‘Are we going to become strangers?’
At his house overlooking the encroaching ocean, Malik sits mending a fishing net.
He is overwhelmed by sadness over his inability to help the community and can only watch as things erode day by day, concerned that if nothing is done, in a few years, the community may not exist at all.
“In two years’ time, are we going to be able to remain in this community or are we going to relocate to another community to become strangers? That is going to be a bad history,” he says.
He worries that his grandchildren will not have a place to point to as their grandfather’s homeland.
“This is my father’s burial ground,” Malik says sombrely, pointing in the direction of a grave. “Where am I going to take him to? Am I going to leave him to get washed away by the ocean surge?
“The government should come to our aid,” he adds quietly, “because we do not have the power to stop it.”
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