This is Ayetoro, the community where I was born. It is an oil-producing, theocratic coastal community in Ilaje, Ondo State. The buildings you are seeing is part of the old palace of the community leader. It was at the centre of town. All the houses, facilities and infrastructure that made it to be at the city centre have all disappeared.
Directly opposite this palace was a street known as Oyetomi Street. My father’s house was No. 5 on that street. It was among the three largest private houses in Ayetoro. That house and so many others have been swallowed by the sea. In that house, doctors, a lawyer, engineers, an accountant, an economist, a Parmanent Secretary and other professionals were birthed to my father, and there he raised all of them before he departed and passed the baton to our mothers and we later began to move out. That is where we all called home, even now in our hearts.
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In the last 30 years, our fortune had been upturned. The sea has been violent and intrusive.
Since 1999, even as a student of OAU, I led a painstaking campaign to get the federal and state governments to wade in and protect our shores and by implication, our homes. They were silent. They were evasive. They were mean. They took our oil everyday and they got our votes every season of election.
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In 2001, I invited journalists to Ayetoro. They came and the sea incursion was reported. At that time only a few places were affected by the surge but we could see that it would get worse if not arrested. A journalist there advised that we should write to the govt.
Because many of our people were complacent and I felt that my letter would not carry weight, I invited one of our brothers, Oluwafemi Olorunlola, and we founded Ayetoro Comunity Youth Council (ACYC) with a few other persons. We then began to write to the government under that name. We wrote two letters to the presidency under Obasanjo. We wrote one to the National Assembly and delivered these letters through Prince Olu Mafo, who represented our Federal Constituency at the House of Representatives.
When we did not get a response on time, in 2002, I brought punch again. I visited AIT, and its then head of reportorial, one Mr Odafe Othihiwa, dispatched some journalists to Ayetoro.
After much pressure from us and media harrassment, the NDDC awarded the contract for the embankment and shore protection of Ayetoro Community and mobilised … It was a sham, a fraud by some politicians. It never did anything, never came to site. The money was stolen and nobody probed it. We shouted even loudly. Nothing was done.
We began another wave of agitation. I brought in Punch again around 2004. Mr Kunle Owolabi was the reporter sent from Punch, he did a wide coverage, a fatanstic two-page report. I brought in Tell Magazine. It was Juwon Soyinka, who later worked with BBC, that Tell sent.
Some Ilaje politicians were involved in the fraud. Some Ayetoro indigenes, who had worthless education, ate from the crumbs that fell off the table.
Then, in 2009, the contract was awarded again by NDDC to a company called … That company only came to view the atlantic. It collected several billions of naira and did nothing. The government failed to probe the company or bring the politicians behind it to book despite our agitation.
Since that 2009, the sea changed gear. It began to rapidly intrude into Ayetoro built-up areas. The beach road, which was a pile at the end of town, was swept off; the houses at the fringe went.
Afterwards, Happy City College was swallowed, the primary school was eaten, the decades old Information Centre and City Hall were consumed by the sea, followed by the old church. The textile and the shoe factories went.
I wrote to the NDDC over it. The community engaged the commission, yet it did nothing. I again reached out to friends and associates who are journalists.
Premium Times came and reported the sad event. My friend and comrade, Mojeed Alabi, came at the peak of the rain in 2019. He was soaked when he came to cover Ayetoro. On his own, he made two additional visits to Ayetoro to report the sad occurence so that government could wade in. I visited BBC office in 2020, even when COVID-19 scared everyone in. Incidentally, I met Juwon Soyinka, who had previously visited Ayetoro as a Tell Magazine reporter on my invitation. He was surprised the problem was still there many years after.
That was his last month in BBC as he was joining another media house. BBC graciously sent Andrew Gift, who came to do a wide coverage of Ayetoro using modern technologies, including a drone. Sadly, some elements within the Ondo State government tried everything to kill the report. After almost a year of suppressing the story and my persistent follow-up, BBC published it sometime in 2021.
Since that time till now, and even along the line, the community leadership has consistently worked hard to get a solution to the problem. The community too has written to government and NGOs. It has invited press houses to cover the menace. Virtually all the media houses in Nigeria have reported Ayetoro, a one-time Nigeria’s beautiful bride, a tourist hub of the 60s up to the 80s. None could save Ayetoro.
Now, all the monuments that our fathers worked hard to build went. The last is the block palace that you see in the attached video and the sea has taken over its courtyard and launched offensive at its surrounding quarters. Its ground floor is fully under the sea. In short, the palace is gone.
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About 80 per cent of the buildings in Ayetoro are gone, and about 96 per cent of the valuable homes are gone.
All of these happened because many of our people looked on while politicians steal us silly. Every past or present representative of Ondo State on the board of NDDC is culpable. Some of them were part of the fraud on Ayetoro. Others either helped to cover it up or they looked away. They are all traitors. All those Ayetoro indigenes, who collected envelopes when the Ayetoro Embankment and Shore Protection Project was discussed at a meeting with contractors and politicians, and returned to call me and my team names, you have now received your project.
I write this so that the truth will not fail even if the struggle fails. Ayetoro will ever remain a scar on the conscience of our politicians. Its relics will haunt our nation of heartless leaders.
(This piece was first published by the author, a renowned lawyer and activist, on his Facebook page. We have his permission to republish).
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