In Nigeria’s megacity, rampant development and a growing population are forcing communities to go further for fish

Almost as soon as the fishermen arrive with their haul, it disappears. The fish market in Epe, at the edge of Lagos, now runs like a kind of seafood cabal, with demand so high that many miss out. The major buyers are served as a priority – the big Lagos restaurants, a few cold room owners, then the rest. Sometimes smaller fishermen will sell to favoured market-stall holders. There is simply not enough to go around.

“When I couldn’t find red snappers in Victoria Island, a friend suggested I go to the Epe market. But the snappers were not there either,” says Enita Aderemi, a local freelance writer. “The freshwater catfish I found cost three times the price I bought them for three months ago, a price that was already high.”

The one-hour drive from her home to Epe is now a regular fixture in Aderemi’s life as she searches for seafood amid the rising prices and demand for fish in Nigeria’s largest city.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lagos is set to double in size by 2050 and local fishers are struggling to keep up with demand. Photograph: Wayne Parsons/Getty Images/Gallo Images

Nigeria is Africa’s largest importer of foreign fish, with a demand for more than 3m metric tonnes each year. Despite having an Atlantic coastline of 853km (530 miles), the country is unable to provide fish for a population that is predicted to double by 2050.

In Lagos, and particularly in Epe, fishermen and farmers are having to travel further to get fish. The Lekki lagoon, previously a fisherman’s paradise, is being slowly depleted by various megacity projects, the biggest of which is an oil refinery owned by Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote.

The Dangote refinery in the Lekki free trade zone, which is partially on the lagoon, lies on roughly 2,500 hectares (6,177 acres) of swampland. It is hoped that it will process 650,000 barrels of oil a day when completed, becoming Africa’s biggest such installation.

Nigeria currently exports all its oil as crude and then reimports refined petroleum products for use inside the country. The $12bn (£9.3bn) refinery is expected to eliminate Nigeria’s dependence on imported petroleum products, in turn lowering demand for foreign exchange, which the government says is a contributor to economic problems.

However, nearby coastal towns and communities are seeing a change in their local ecosystems. “The dredging of the coast to sand fill the lagoon for the construction of the refinery made the fish in the area disappear. We had to travel far into the ocean to get fish, but even that became dangerous because the waves became unpredictable,” explains former fisherman Ayo Falade.

With a family of four to feed, Falade moved inland, to the lagoon. But even there, fish are disappearing. “A conservationist came and told us that the sand-filling was changing the local ecosystem,” he says.

People living in coastal communities around the refinery and free trade zone are already in danger of losing their homes.

As fishing activity in the area has declined, fishermen are having to make longer trips to other communities to meet the growing demand.

Shakiru Tijani, a fisherman in Epe, is among those who say development in the area has come at a personal cost. “When the industrial projects began, I and others lost the dams we had made to catch fish. We now have to go for two or three hours into the water to catch fish and usually it’s not enough for the customers we have.”

The fish market is controlled by the sellers, mostly wives of fishermen turned brokers. “Before, they would come back with fish and then, we would sell. Now, we are able to look at how much fish might be needed and fund fishing trips with our money,” says a woman named Babalola.

Babalola and other fish brokers are often able to raise between 150,000 and 300,000 naira (£322–£645) for a trip. The price of fish has quadrupled since 2015 when work on the refinery began.

Lani Akinbo-Michaels, a seafood dealer who heads Lani’s Farmer’s Market, says fish is becoming a luxury in the country. “Not only here, but in Makoko and Badagry, it is difficult to get fish. The fish is smaller and more expensive, some species are slowly fading away.”

To make way for infrastructure development, the government of Lagos has been evicting waterfront communities and building high-rise housing projects on the land. More than 30,000 people have been displaced, reducing the number of people able to fish and farm in Lagos’ waters.

Since 2017, the price of shrimps and prawns has more than tripled says Akinbo-Michaels. “Former communities like Otodo Gbame had shrimp and prawn farmers, but since they were demolished by the government, people in Lagos have had to turn to imported fish products. There just is not enough to serve all of Lagos.”

Prof Lucian Obinnaya Chukwu of the department of marine sciences at the University of Lagos believes there are many reasons fish are disappearing, in addition to the impact of the refinery and other development projects on marine habitats.

“The ever-changing nature of Lagos coupled with climate change means that unprotected marine population[s] will be at the receiving end of development,” he says. “Increasing sea levels and rising global temperatures will affect the fish population in Nigeria.”

While guidelines are in place to protect Nigeria’s waters and environment, enforcement has been a problem. In 1991, Nigeria’s Department of Petroleum Resources released environmental guidelines for the petroleum industry in Nigeria. The country is also a signatory to the Abidjan convention on international waters governance.

Shell and Nigeria have failed on oil pollution clean-up, Amnesty says Read more

Historically, however, Nigeria has failed to deal with oil spills properly. Years after the Ogoni oil spills, the clean up is not yet underway. In Badagry, the Yinka Folawiyo Petroleum Company is accused of polluting the environment by causing acid rain, and reducing the quality of fish in the waters.

“The moment that the Dangote refinery is turned on, it is is over for us fishermen. What will our lives be then?” says Tijani. There is a fear that an accidental oil leak could leave the land and water in the same state as in Ogoniland. “The government has not cleaned it up and people have died over nothing.”

“Without any government intervention at this point, we don’t know what will happen to the local fish population,” says Aderemi. “What Lagos will we leave for the next generation?”