ENVIRONMENTAL Scientist, Professor Ben Akpati, has warned that the bar beach, reclaimed barely a year ago, will be washed away within the next two years.
Akpati told News Agency of Nigeria at the weekend in Lagos, that with an erosion rate of between 35 and 40 metres a year, the beach, reclaimed at a cost of about N1.5 billion, would revert to the situation it was before the sandfilling effort of last year.
"The Inter-Continental Merchant Back (IMB) building, as well as other buildings, are just about 68 metres from the shoreline. At that rate, it will be less than two years, just one year plus and we will be back to square one," he said.
The beach was saidfilled as a temporary measure to mitigate the threat of sea erosion on the adjoining Ahmadu Bello way as well as the multi-billion naira structures on the waterfront.
Akpati, former director of the Nigerian Institute for Oceanography and Marine Research (NIOMR), Lagos, expressed disappointment at the inability of successive federal administration to find a permanent solution to the recurring erosion.
"The best solution we have is that we must build break-waters. We should have break-water systems and groins," he said, adding that the cause of erosion on the beach is due to the action of sea waves which originate from the southern tip of South Africa.
"The action of these waves along the Nigeria-Ghana, West African coastline is very, very strong, strong because of their long fetch".
Akpati explained that the longer the fetch and the wider the ocean where the wind blows, the bigger the waves that will coast off Nigeria to obstruct the waves responsible for coastal erosion in the country.
"We should build the break-waters about 200 metres off-shore and parallel to the shore. The on-coming waves will smash on these huge builders that will be placed on the sea-floor and rising above the sea," he said, adding that the result would diffuse the energy of the in-coming waves.
Akpati warned that the consequence of this measure might have a devastating impact down-stream in the area of Eko Hotel as the area will be flooded and washed away into the sea. "There should be a mechanism to move sand to stabilise the area. "There are two ways we can do this. You can move sand using dredgers by pumping sand periodically down-stream to maintain the equilibrium," he said.
Another alternative is that "you can use what we call sand bye-pass system. You can tunnel from the lighthouse beach where we have stockpile of sand and pump it into the bar beach and pump it across into the area that is deficient and maintain equilibrium".
He traced the cause of the erosion to the construction of the east and west moles (break-waters) between 1908 and 1912 to stabilise the dredged deep entrance into the Lagos harbour.
Akpati said that while the Takawa Bay had stockpilled sand since 1908 and its beach grown to almost 2.5 km. the bar beach had eroded to almost three km because of the construction of the moles.
"So, the east and west moles are incriminated in the problem that we have. And if we must stop the erosion, all we must do is to bring down the east and west moles and in a very short time, the beach