Daily Sun September 23, 2010 New city from Bar Beach to house 250,000 people By Alban Opara and Peter Anosike

South Energyx Nigeria Limited is currently turning the hand of the clock by extending the Bar Beach defences into the open sea, a mile and a half offshore to reclaim land that was lost to the Atlantic erosion over the past century.

At the end of this exercise, which has been described as the most ambitious in Africa, a vital new city for Lagos called Eko Atlantic would emerge on the newly reclaimed land to set a new standard for living and working in West Africa.

Speaking while taking journalists round the site, the developers' Sales Manager, Marc Chaghouri, said that the city on completion would house about 250,000 people.
He said the infrastructure to be put in place would be comparable to, if not better than those in Dubai, Singapore and the other major cities.

According to him, a 60-kilometre road would run across the city. Chaghouri said that there would also be a light train as well as a water transport service. He said that at present, about 11 per cent of the land has been sold, adding that construction may begin soon. Eko Atlantic is a dynamic new city that will be built on nine million square metres of reclaimed land and aims to provide world-class property with a modern and independently reliable infrastructure to an area in high demand. It will be split into seven unique districts that will stand on 1.3 million square metres of land. The sea wall fondly called the Great Wall of Lagos will be wide enough for a pedestrian promenade and is designed to withstand the worst storms imaginable over a hundred years' cycle.

This powerful sea defence system will stretch 6.5 kilometres and is being built a mile and a half offshore. The Great Wall is already more than one kilometre long. The city will feature round-the-clock independent power generation and water supply, sewage disposal and maintenance systems, security, a public light railway system which will have 60 stops throughout the city, and a network of internal roads designed to ensure free flow of traffic. "The city will have zero tolerance for street parking. A network of fibre optic cables will connect state-of-the-art telecommunications and an internal citywide waterway will be linked to three marinas," Chaghouri boasts. He said they would create a specialised planning unit to streamline an approval process and ensure the quality of construction and the integrity of each development.

He said that Lagos is one of the fastest growing cities in the world and the demand for prime real estate is urgent. He stressed that Eko Atlantic is being built to meet those demands with a brand new city that would be second to none. It would be recalled that Eko Atlantic city would not be the first city to be built on reclaimed land. Victoria Island was originally surrounded by water that was bordered by the Atlantic on the south, the mouth of Lagos Lagoon to the west, the Five Cowrie Creek to the north and swamps on the east. The colonial government began the process of filling the eastern swamps to reduce mosquito breeding areas. This created a land bridge between Victoria Island and Lekki Peninsula, ending its existence as a true Island.

After independence, successive state governments expanded this development culminating in a highway connecting Victoria Island to Epe. This activity, along with the rapid commercialisation of Victoria Island, served to stimulate residential developments along the Lekki-Epe corridor starting with Lekki Phase Two.