Gone, Gone, Ayetoro

Nestled against the backdrop of the Atlantic coast and a rich line of mangrove-swamp forests lies Ayetoro, a riverine town in the oil-rich Ilaje Local Government Area of Ondo State, Nigeria. Once known by its epithet, ‘‘The Happy City,’’ the community thrived until it began to crumble under the relentless onslaught of devastating ocean surges and floods, linked both to crude oil exploration by multinational corporations and the growing influence of climate change.

A visit to the embattled community on October 9, 2023, by the Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA) team revealed a truly disheartening scene. The persistent incursion of the sea had transformed the once-vibrant town into a gloomy landscape. Across the town stood squalid wooden shanties connected by networks of frail choppy boardwalks, all supported by stilts dug into the swamps. Remnants of historical buildings in the community bore scars from the sharp bites of unyielding ocean waves, even while others lay submerged beneath dark oil-coated waters.

‘‘Ayetoro used to be far from the sea, but now the sea keeps encroaching daily. I fear that anytime from now, Ayetoro will sink!’’ A worried 40-year-old Aralu Emmanuel, an indigene of the community, lamented to the group from CAPPA while showing them around the sinking town, where sea waves relentlessly lashed at the rubbles of buildings along the shores.

Good Old Days of Theocratic Communism

Before the ocean’s destructive encroachment, Ayetoro used to be a model town founded by a revolutionary group of prophets who hailed from different communities in the Ilaje coastal area. In stark contrast to the prevailing practices of their era, these Christian prophets preached against the prevalent and evil tradition of killing twins in the early 1940s. However, as time passed, they became perceived as outcasts within the communities they resided in and viewed as disruptors of tradition. Subsequently, they faced persecution and ostracization from their families and relatives.

On January 12, 1947, this group of prophets and their adherents, bound by a common faith and societal discrimination, decided to relocate to a new land and live independently, following divine guidance received during a prayer session on January 10, 1947.  Among the founding fathers who embarked on this remarkable journey to Ayetoro were Zaccheus Okenla who led the movement, Zachaeus Ọmọtowa, Zachaeus Ilela Ẹnigbokun, Moses Shaeyi, Ebenezer Shaeyi, Matthew Obebe, and Ọba Ethiopia Ojagbohunmi Peter, the first ‘Ogeloyinbo’ (Ọba of Ayetoro community).

The Oba of the Ayetoro community also serves as the head of the church, and his council manages both community and religious administrative matters.

Once settled in Ayetoro, the Christian community thrived on communal living, where all personal possessions merged into a collective treasury. Inhabitants worked together on various projects, pooling earnings to provide collective food, shelter, and clothing for themselves. The majority of Ayetoro’s population were fisherfolk, leveraging the sea’s economic trade opportunities to rapidly transform their town into an industrialised city and tourist destination with neatly paved roads over the course of a decade.

In 1953, after entering into a bilateral agreement with Western Germany, the town built its powerhouse, providing electricity to all homes and their inhabitants.

The town also boasted, among other important industries, a vibrant soap-making factory, a textile plant, a shoemaking firm, a dockyard, and a technical college and workshop equipped with modern machinery. Many of the college’s students and workers, who were also community members, gained international training through bilateral agreements with countries like West Germany, Austria and the United Kingdom. These community members acquired strong technical skills from their international exposure, which they transferred to other inhabitants of the town. They also utilised these skills to construct sophisticated fishing trawlers and outboard vessels. These vessels dominated transportation across Nigeria’s Niger Delta, ferrying passengers and goods not only within the region but also to Lagos State and even neighbouring countries, including Benin Republic, Togo, Cameroon, and Gabon, among others.

’Ayetoro was so popular and pretty that during its heyday, it regularly attracted the visits of tourists, including dignitaries such as the Colonial Governor of Western Region, Sir John Rankine and Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the former Premier of Old Western Region,’’ said His Royal Highness (HRH) Oba Ojagbohunmi, Oluwanbe (JP), the present-day Ogeloyimbo of Ayetoro, with a wistful look on his face during an exclusive interview with the CAPPA team at his palace in the community.

On both sides of the king sat members of his council, men and women, all deeply affected by their desolate circumstances. According to the Oba, many community residents, including some council members, now live in the palace after ocean surges and frequent floods destroyed their homes.

The Resource Curse

Ilaje is reputed to be the only oil-producing government area in Ondo State, contributing about 60,000 barrel per day (BPD)  to Nigeria’s oil production. Ayetoro, like many other communities within Ilaje, is an oil-producing area with oil pipelines and canals laid by big oil corporations such as Chevron and Agip, crisscrossing its geographical expanse both onshore and offshore. These infrastructures facilitate the exploration and transportation of crude oil from the community and its environs, accounting for 5.4% of the 60,000 BPD of Ondo State’s crude oil production.

While the presence of commercial oil activities in the area might evoke expectations and visions of prosperity and development for Ayetoro and its inhabitants, the story unfolds differently. Like a subplot in the larger narrative and experiences of oil-rich communities across Nigeria, oil-drilling operations have paradoxically reversed the community’s development rather than promoted its growth.

Extensive oil activities and numerous unaddressed crude oil spills over the years have not only caused subsidence but also led to the massive pollution of the community’s waters, resulting in the devastating rise of sea levels and poisoning of aquatic life.

According to HRH, Oba Ojagbohunmi, ‘‘in the later part of the 80s when oil exploration started, people noticed that it used to be a normal cycle of the sea to take a few portions of our land away and in another six months re-add the land portions back or more. That was normal, but in the later part of the 80s, the rate at which it was taking the soil was higher than the rate at which it was adding mud to it, and people started to wonder what was happening.

“Ayetoro used to be far from the sea. People who come now may wonder why Ayetoro was built close to the sea. It was not established close to the sea; it used to be several kilometres away. It was even a challenge for our fathers back then, who used to walk long distances from the sea back home after fishing and conducting other businesses by the sea. It was the sea that started to move closer and closer until it started eating our land.

By the early 90s, the community started complaining to the government and its agencies but got no serious response until 2000 and 2001 when we realised that the sea was really close. At this time, it had destroyed our football pitch and some of the industries located near the sea.’’

Failed Government Interventions

Worried by the growing sea incursions, residents began to seek government interventions to address the issue. In 2003, the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) awarded a contract to Gallet Nigeria Limited to build a seashore line wall at the sum of N6.4 billion with an upfront payment of 25 per cent. But, according to locals, this contract seemed more like a story than reality.

‘‘We only read about the news on television and news. Up till now, we never saw the contractor or NDDC to tell us the status of operations, so we continued our agitation until 2009. Our people even started to do embankments with wood. Right now, what we have is just 20 per cent of what used to be our land.’’ Oba Ojagbohunmi said of the contract awarded to Gallet Nigeria Limited.

Again in 2009, the hopes of Ayetoro residents for relief were crushed when the NDDC re-awarded the contract costing  N6.5 billion to Dredging Atlantic, with a mobilisation fee of N2.5 billion, yet no tangible outcome and progress were achieved. In this case, the failure to consider local context and the opinions of community members in designing a fitting embankment, coupled with the contractor’s failure to fulfil its obligations, contributed to the overall failure of the intervention.

‘‘They sent engineers to do analyses and soil tests, and they decided that the technology they call Geotube would be the way to stop the wave. When community people asked them how it worked, they said it would be a heavy floater lined across the ocean to receive the impact of the wave as against the soil. But our people told them that the wave here is stronger than the technology of Geotube. We requested that they construct an embankment using heavy stones to line the coast, but they rejected this.

“They went to Holland, bought some Geotubes for a test run, and laid them on the western bank of the community, but after a week, huge powerful sea waves pushed the Geotubes onto the beach.  Months later, they returned with some equipment and laid pipes and said they would sand fill. They pumped sand like 30 square meters, close to a height of 6 feet, and that was all they did before they stopped working, saying there was no more sand,’’ Oba Ojagbohunmi recounted

This unfortunate trend of unfinished interventions further worsened the plight of Ayetoro residents. The excavated holes left behind have become additional entry points for coastal erosion, resulting in huge losses not only in terms of land and buildings but also, tragically, in terms of lives.

Sandwiched between an invading sea and vast, oil-polluted, and mangrove-depleted muddy swamp waters, community members now find themselves living under conditions akin to those experienced by refugees.

Notably, the Oba’s Palace stands in ruin, its entire courtyard surrounded by brackish, stagnant water.  According to Oba Ojagbohunmi, what was formerly a magnificent three-storey building now lies submerged eight-feet underwater, with the first floor entirely buried beneath the ground.

The ongoing devastation has also led to a growing health concern in the community, with hypertension becoming a prevalent issue among Ayetoro residents. For women in the community, the ongoing sea incursion and oil spillages on their waters have not only robbed them of shelter but also eroded their economic power.

‘‘Oil spillage has affected us economically. We are a community of farmers who are also into fishing. Before now, the men used to go into the sea to catch fish, and our women would buy large quantities of these fish, process them and sell them across states in the country. But now, the oil spillage has affected everyone. Also, we used to have about three schools in the community, but they have now been destroyed by the sea. Now, we have to take our children to urban areas like Okitipupa and Ekiti, but the transport fare and increasing cost of things are destabilising things for us. We have been crying to the world to help us,’’ said 63-year-old Mofeoluwa Arowolo Nee Francis.

Earlier in October 2023, the Nigerian House of Representatives vowed to investigate the failure of the shoreline contracts awarded by the NDDC following the adoption of a motion titled ‘‘ Need to Avert the Rising Tension of Sea Incursion Ravaging Ayetoro Community in llaje Local Government Area of Ondo State.” The motion was presented by Hon. Donald Kimikanoh Ojogo (APC-Ondo State) during a plenary season. However, given the severe conditions facing the community, it appears increasingly unlikely they can endure much longer before succumbing to the harsh realities of their environment.

‘‘If it is something we can do on our own, we would have done it, but we can’t. Don’t allow the sea to take Ayetoro,’’ pleaded Mofeoluwa Arowolo, with worries visibly etched across her face.

For the Executive Director of CAPPA, Akinbode Oluwafemi, Ayetoro’s plight is but one tragic chapter in the vast tome of suffering endured by frontline communities for crimes against nature they did not partake in.

‘‘”The urgency of help needed to rehabilitate communities underscores the critical need to swiftly conclude global discussions on loss and damage arrangements for the vulnerable global south. Additionally, resolute actions must also be undertaken to hold historical polluters and disruptors of nature accountable for their transgressions. The deadlock situation of climate action, fueled by blame games, must come to an end.  Global actors and state authorities must turn words to actions that provide relief for the millions across Africa afflicted by climate change,’’ he emphasised.