MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Many beach communities thrived for years on the peninsula and islands in the lagoon around Nigeria's crowded commercial capital, Lagos. But things have changed over the last decade. NPR's Emmanuel Akinwotu reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SAMUEL ADOZIE: (Singing in non-English language).
EMMANUEL AKINWOTU, BYLINE: Fifty-seven-year-old Samuel Adozie (ph) makes his living on Tarkwa Bay, one of the most popular beaches in Lagos. He strolls across the white sand each weekend, as he has for decades, a guitar hanging across his lean frame, earning tips as he serenades visitors with covers of classic songs.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
ADOZIE: (Singing in non-English language).
AKINWOTU: While he plays, people lounge in wooden cabanas facing the shore or play badminton and soccer on the sand. Others sit on the nearby rocks to fish or watch the waves.
(SOUNDBITE OF OCEAN WAVES)
AKINWOTU: But there's a darker side to life here for the lower-income communities who populate the area around the bay. They sustain the beach and depend on it but increasingly face violence and uncertainty.
(SOUNDBITE OF WINE POURING)
AKINWOTU: Among them is 40-year-old Esther Isobo. She runs a bar selling palm wine, a milky alcoholic drink tapped from palm trees.
ESTHER ISOBO: I was here 1984. I was a little baby anyway.
AKINWOTU: She's lived on Tarkwa Bay her whole life in a wooden bungalow her uncle built until it was destroyed five years ago.
ISOBO: One day, we just wake up. They say, one hour. Everybody pack.
AKINWOTU: Speaking in pidgin, she describes how scores of armed navy personnel arrived at dawn. Without any warning, they ordered her and about 5,000 other people who lived by the sea to leave.
ISOBO: They destroyed the house. They don (ph) already scatter everything - everything. They don push everything down. Everything don destroy.
AKINWOTU: She said they destroyed everything. She didn't even have time to gather her belongings before bulldozers raised her home. Since then, Isobo and hundreds who run businesses catering to tourists have been allowed to return, but they aren't allowed to build any permanent structures. So now she lives in a small shack that leaks when it rains.
ISOBO: Yeah, this is where I'm sleeping. Is this a life? It's not fair. I don't know why they are treating us like this.
AKINWOTU: The evictions at Tarkwa Bay aren't isolated.
(SOUNDBITE OF WAVES CRASHING)
AKINWOTU: Tens of thousands in beach communities on a 60-mile stretch of peninsula and islands around the Atlantic coast have been forcibly displaced by the Nigerian Navy, backed by the government. The latest eviction was last year in Ogogoro, a 100-year-old community of a few thousand people.
(SOUNDBITE OF RUBBLE SHIFTING UNDERFOOT)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
AKINWOTU: But now it's mostly deserted, covered in heaps of rubble.
This is where you stay?
FELICIA EKRAKENE: This is where I stay.
AKINWOTU: Fifty-eight-year-old Felicia Ekrakene (ph) speaks in pidgin and is squatting in a demolished house near the shore.
EKRAKENE: At once just one day, they say make we carry our load. No feeling. No pity.
AKINWOTU: She said, without warning, the 2,000 or so people living here were forced out last year. Now Ekrakene and a few others who've stayed live like fugitives, fleeing into the bushes whenever naval officers arrive.
EKRAKENE: The property we get, no be your government give us. We suffer for it.
AKINWOTU: She said she strived for years to build her home here, but now it's gone. The Nigerian Navy claim they've evicted residents for stealing oil from pipelines that flow through the lagoon, costing millions of dollars a year for Africa's biggest oil producer. But community advocates say there's a more sinister motive at play.
MEGAN CHAPMAN: It's a clear case of a legitimate law enforcement purpose that was extended and abused to carry out a large-scale land grab of prime real estate waterfront properties.
AKINWOTU: Megan Chapman is a lawyer and founder of Justice Empowerment Initiative (ph), an NGO providing legal support for displaced communities.
CHAPMAN: Essentially, what you've seen is a privatization of the beach in the hands of a few powerful interests.
(SOUNDBITE OF BOAT ENGINE RUMBLING)
AKINWOTU: And on a boat ride around the coastline, this is plain to see. Several luxury beach clubs have sprung up across the lagoon and near the Atlantic coast. And communities that were cleared out years ago have been replaced by resorts and bungalows, bars and pools, leased for parties and weekend getaways.
(SOUNDBITE OF OCEAN WAVES)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Non-English language spoken).
AKINWOTU: Back on Tarkwa Bay, Esther Isobo still sells her palm wine.
This was not how your life was before.
ISOBO: No. I was living OK.
AKINWOTU: She says everything has changed now. The navy has established their own businesses and have doubled the entry fee to the beach for their own profit. Less people come here now, making it harder to make a living. And she feels they could be forced out at any moment.
ISOBO: I'm dying silently. Inside, I'm dying silently. I will not tell you lie.
AKINWOTU: And she says she's putting on a brave face to cover how she really feels.
Emmanuel Akinwotu, NPR News, Lagos. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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