Opinion article by Duke of Shomolu, Joseph Edgar
You know I kinda laugh when people who live in Ikate say they live on the island.
I will just look at the mumu and say under my breath what do you want people who live in Ikoyi crescent or Bourdillon to say now.
The Lekki dream is dead. It was a euphoric attestation to new wealth. One morning we woke up and a new found land was discovered. Affluence spread and the new yuppies moved there in their droves.
Lekki with its unplanned layout and boisterous and loud new tenants was never a prospect for me. Some of us saw through the maze and concluded that in less than 20 years we would be having another Surulere or Bariga in our hands.
As I drive through Ikate, I think of Lagos with pity. Is this part of the much vaunted Lagos master plan?
Rickety Estates clustered among themselves in various states of disrepair. Plumbing falling off, plaster falling off and drainage’s, where existing blocks are dirty.
This madness is as a result of an incestuous and corrupt marriage between landowners, government and greedy and thieving developers.
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Land in Lekki is gold. Valuation is still ramping up in a meaningless race towards Golgotha.
This situation has thrown the need for control and regulation to the winds. So in this slum, instead of collapsing towers as is the case in the richer neighborhoods of Ikoyi, what you get is a myriad of filthy barracks that makes the legendary Nigerian police barracks look like fancy towers in Ibiza.
Ikate is the hub of the dirt. Its greasy corridors attract all sorts of dark soldiers. Crime is high and prostitution and drugs being the mainstay.
The further you go, the worse it gets. By the time you are getting to Osapa London and Alpha beach you are wishing you had remained in Shomolu and yet they will say, ‘ we live on the island’
Lekki Phase 1 remains 40% slum. Terrible drainage, damaged roads and wobbly infrastructure.
You will still find an oasis of class though, like the Nicon Town where you would think you are in Beverly Hills. But the drudgery around it has made many of its inhabitants contemplate movement to the paradise called Banana Island and the like.
Lekki is a collapsed dream. Dead to Lagos and a huge disappointment. It’s even sad that we had to drive away the people of Maroko whose ancestral hold of the land didn’t stop the pillage to foster on Nigeria this babel of dirt called Lekki.
This was not the Lekki Chief Awolowo had in mind when he blessed the land for providing succor during his brief stay in the colonial prison in its bowels.
Awolowo would today cringe at the smell that comes out of the gutters of Lekki and beg God to forgive those who say they have the master-plan with which in their greed and urge to dispense favors in a rent state, have turned this dream into a hell.
Please leave me for mainland, if na Ikate be Island.
*Duke of Shomolu*
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