The Nigeria Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) has placed a stop-work-order on the Apple Island project being undertaken by the Nigeria Army Property Company Limited (NAPCL) and its development partner, Tauraf International Limited.
Apple Island is to be developed on 43 hectares of land to be reclaimed from the Lagos Lagoon adjacent to Banana Island, Nigeria’s most exclusive and expensive residential real estate destination. The proposed island estate which has Julius Berger and Van Oord as main contractors, is planned as a mixed-use development that will deliver 100 housing units.
The promoters of the island project, which has been a subject of contention since its conception, is alleged to have apparently violated the rules guiding project development on the Nigerian waterways by commencing dredging activities for the projects without following NIWA’s guidelines.
A statement obtained by BusinessDay at the weekend alleges that NAPCL and Tauraf International are yet to present to the waterways authority the project’s environmental impact analysis; obtain approval from Federal Ministry of Environment to create the Island; hold a public hearing; present a survey plan and Certificate of Ownership\Occupancy and make payments which are pre-conditions for such development.
All these, according to the statement signed by Adelowo Adesola, undermine the powers of agencies of government at both the federal and state levels and, in particular NIWA, leaving it with no choice but to impose the stop-work-order on the project a few days ago.
Lagos State, a sprawling city in Nigeria, is in dire need of land for real estate activities, especially housing which is grossly in deficit in the state to the tune of three million units. This explains the surge in land reclamation activities in the state to create new urban communities to absorb the emerging middle class population in the state who need modern housing in exclusive neighbourhoods.
But unlike others before it, there are so many things wrong with the approach to developing Apple Island as another urban community in the state. Besides the failure of the promoters to create a well delineated access road to the proposed island, development experts argue that the proposed island will be wrongly located if it is allowed to succeed.
“If the Island has to be created, it should not be where it is currently located as it is mainly within the general channels used for navigational purposes; the development of the Island in its current location obviously can cause accidents on the waterways because of dredging activities”, said an who travels on Lagos waterways.
A professional town planner affirmed, noting that what NAPCL and its partners were doing violated all urban development rules. He wondered how an island development could be created without the state government knowing or being part of it. “What would be the impact on the road in its location; what are the disaster management plans; what facilities –schools, hospitals, etc are going to be provided to make it less exerting on existing facilities somewhere else?” the town planner queried.
The promoters of the island estate have pitched themselves against the residents of Banana Island by choosing to make an existing road in Banana Island the main access road to their new development.
But residents of the exclusive Banana Island are already resisting that plan to the point of a legal action, contending that they don’t see the workability of an access to the new Island without an encroachment that would involve creating a thoroughfare through their estate.
“Nobody can come here to do a development of this magnitude without letting us know. We are not saying you should not do your development but access to that development is going to be a problem. Besides, this road is already servicing two estates within. So, allowing another estate use the same road will not augur well for residents of this estate,” said one of the residents in their complaint to Tukur Buratai, the Chief of Army Staff and chairman of NAPCL.
CHUKA UROKO
