A former Deputy National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, Bode George, has blamed persistent flooding in parts of Lagos on what he described as indiscriminate and “greedy” sand-filling of the Lagos Lagoon.
Speaking during an interview with real estate expert Femi Rogers uploaded on Facebook on Thursday, George said large portions of Ikoyi and Lekki were originally surrounded by water before extensive land reclamation altered the natural landscape.
According to him, the environmental consequences of the reclamation projects are now becoming evident.
“The whole of Ikoyi was sandfield all the way to Falomo. We don’t have that history documented. Even I struggle to remember because I’ve never really read about all these things. We don’t have proper documentation of what happened,” he said.
George recalled that the Lekki villages existed long before the extensive sand-filling that connected parts of the area to Ikoyi.
“The Lekki villages were there, but it was all sandfield connecting back to Ikoyi. It was all water,” he said.
He warned that excessive land reclamation had significantly reduced the lagoon’s capacity to receive stormwater, worsening flooding across the state.
