Tinubu Spends Trillions on Coastal Highway While Ayetoro Sinks Into the Atlantic

The Atlantic Ocean is swallowing Ayetoro, a fishing community of about 10,000 people in Ondo State, at an average rate of 15 metres every year. The town’s coastline has been retreating steadily since the early 2000s. In 2024, a single ocean surge destroyed 50 buildings. Today, an estimated 80 percent of Ayetoro’s landmass has been lost to the sea. Families whose homes are destroyed are constantly rebuilding further inland, only for the water to strike them again. The traditional king, Oba Oluwambe Ojagbohunmi, once had a palace with 100 rooms. Only about a dozen remain. At night, the sound of waves crashing against the walls disturbs his sleep. “I’ve become a refugee in my own community,” said Thompson Akingboye, a fisherman who lost his father’s house in 2019 and managed to save only his university degree certificate.

The Ondo State Oil Producing Areas Development Commission has said that about N94 billion is required to save Ayetoro from extinction. The commission has called on the international community, development partners and donor agencies to support efforts to address the growing environmental crisis. The traditional ruler and other community leaders have jointly appealed to President Bola Tinubu and the Federal Government to urgently implement permanent shoreline protection measures. They have also called for a comprehensive investigation into previous shoreline protection contracts awarded for Ayetoro, alleging that corruption undermined earlier intervention efforts.

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But President Tinubu has not responded to Ayetoro’s pleas. Instead, he has made the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway the centrepiece of his re-election campaign. The 700-kilometre highway is being built at an estimated cost of $11 billion. The government is expected to provide 30 percent of the road’s budget, with the contractor, Hitech Construction Company Ltd, bearing the rest of the cost and recovering its investment by collecting tolls for 15 years. At the opening of the first section of the highway, Tinubu declared: “We have a road that will outlive all of us here.”

Yet environmentalists have warned that the highway will be highly vulnerable to rising sea levels. Environmental campaigner Nnimmo Bassey, former chairman of Friends of the Earth International, has described the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway as “the very embodiment of climate denial.” “We are witnessing a very rapid rise in sea level along the Nigerian coastline,” he warned.

The contrast could not be starker. While Ayetoro sinks into the Atlantic, Tinubu is spending trillions on a road that experts say will be swallowed by the same ocean. While residents of Ayetoro are walking on the remains of their neighbours’ houses, Tinubu is promising that his coastal highway will “revolutionise” Nigeria’s transport infrastructure. While the people of Ayetoro are begging for N94 billion to save their community, Tinubu is pushing ahead with an $11 billion project that runs along the same coastline.

The people of Ayetoro have lost their homes, their schools, their healthcare centres, their cultural heritage and their future. They have appealed to their President for help. He has not answered. Instead, he has chosen to spend billions on a road that may not outlive him, while their community disappears beneath the waves. As the traditional king of Ayetoro put it: “This is our land. Where can we go? It’s complicated.”

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