Rhodes-Vivour vindicated as Minister says dredging, sandfilling in Lagos State defiles FEC’s directive

By KEMI KASUMU

The Minister of Works in Nigeria, Engr. Dave Umahi, says dredging and sandfilling along seas and rivers especially near bridges in Lagos State or anywhere in Nigeria is illegal and attracts heavy punishment.

The Minister was speaking about 90 days after Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, an opposition figure in Lagos State politics, had called attention to the reckless way and manner activities of dredgers and sandfillers were going on in the supposed Centre of Excellence.

In February, Rhodes-Vivour challenged the Lagos State Government to produce the Enviromemtal Impact Assessment that allows the reckless sandfilling in Makoko and the consequences that would follow.

“Thankfully, the Minister of works is also raising the alarm. When I say that Lagos is criminally misgoverned, the evidence is so ubiquitous,” Rhodes-Vivour said in reaction to the minister remarks.

According to Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, who was Lagos State Governorship Candidate for Labour Party (LP) in 2023, “Developments don’t just have to be simply ‘we sandfill abd we build’ . Venis is literally built like Makoko but just in a nicer way. It’s built on stilt, water flew to it.

“Look at Amsterdam, which also has the same kind of issues that we have. They are floating buildings there and things like that.

“And worse still, and what is also a concern and should be concern to a lot of Lagosians, when I was working in Delta State, we were trying to do a sandfilling next to the Niger Bridge and the biggest challenge we had was how we would dredge sand to sandfill the place that we wanted to put. Abd we were told that we could not dredge, minimum distance to the bridge was 800 meters.

“Now, when you look down on Third Mainland Bridge and see where dredging is going on, 800 meters have not been maintained. So, if you are going to sandfill that huge amount of sand, I want to see the Environmental Impact Assessment that they can dredge so close to the Third Mainland Bridge.

“So, these are some of the things that should be of concern to Lagosians not just for the look of it but also the sustainability of that community and Lagos Mainland as a whole,” Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour said.

In what appears like vindicating him, the Minister of Works, Engr. Dave Umahi, said it surprised him to see that in Lagos, where the President who presided over the ban on activities of dredgers, such activities are perpetrated.

The Minister said, “I also saw along the line a very serious dredging along Thirds Mainland Bridge, notwithstanding that Federal Executive – Council about four months back – baned dredging nationwide, any form of dredging, 10 kilometers radius from all bridges in Nigeria.

“So, I was very shocked to see that dredging is still taking place and I’m told that the persons have been arrested. I want to hand such people, when they are handed over to me, to the law enforcement agents because it’s defilement of the directive of Federal Executive Council’s directive chaired by Mr. President and the punishment is very heavy.

“The dredging of sand along seas and rivers is very dangerous because all the pipes in Lagos State were executed through skin friction which means that it is the sand that is holding the pipes and holding the bridge.

“And so if we now go ahead to escalate this sand, it is dangerous. At the Third Mainland Bridge we have installed a camera to observe what is going on , on the top and also under the bridge and so we are going to be looking at that for all the bridges in Lagos State,” the minister said.

Investigations, however, revealed that activities of dredgers who also are responsible for sandfilling that is causing overflow of water and abnormal erosion in Lagos State especially in the Lagos Island are not unknown to government of Lagos State. This, it was learnt, was reason behind a letter written by the Renaissance Patriots Foundation, a socio-cultural organisation established to achieve a better state for Lagos State indigenes, rejecting the demolition of Adeniji-Adele Scheme II Housing Estate mid-last year.

The state government had given waterlog in Lagos Island as excuse for the planned demolition but the indigenes’ group said not at all. It said waterlog in the part of the state was caused by the blockage occasioned by the sandfilling of IIuburin that brought about the building of the housing estate now sitting on the channel water during rains should pass on to the lagoon.