Secondary schools in the north-eastern Nigerian state of Yobe have been ordered to close until September after a massacre at a boarding school.
Authorities said 42 people were killed in a gun and bomb attack by suspected Islamist extremists early on Saturday in the Mamudo district.
Witnesses said the assailants, believed to be Boko Haram Islamists, rounded up students and staff in a dormitory before throwing explosives inside and opening fire.
The gunmen "stormed the school around 5:30am and began to shoot at the students from different directions," said a spokesman for a military task force in the state, Lieutenant Eli Lazarus.
A senior police officer said the students were asleep when the attackers stormed their school.
It was the third school attack in the region in recent weeks, and the second in Yobe.
The government issued a statement ordering "all secondary schools in the state be closed down from Monday 8th July 2013 until a new academic session begins in September."
Boko Haram, which translates roughly to "Western education is a sin," has repeatedly targeted schools in the north-east as part of its four year insurgency.
One local resident said Saturday's attack was believed to be a reprisal for the killing of 22 Boko Haram members during a military raid in the town of Dogon Kuka earlier in the week.
The European Union condemned the Yobe school attack, as a "horrific murder by terrorists."
Calls for phone network to be restored
The state government also called on the military to restore local mobile phone services, saying a blackout was preventing residents from reporting suspicious activity.
Nigeria's military cut phone service in much of the country's north-east in mid-May, in an effort to end Boko Haram's insurgency.
Satellite phones have also been banned, with the military saying insurgents use them to plan attacks, and landlines are rare.
A number of residents had initially expressed support for the phone cut if it could lead to peace.
Violence linked to the Boko Haram insurgency has left some 3,600 people dead since 2009, including killings by security forces, which have come under criticism for alleged abuses.
The current military offensive was launched after President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states on May 14.
He said at the time that the insurgents had managed to take control of a number of remote, border areas of the region.
Since then, the military has claimed major successes and say they have pushed the insurgents out, but the violence has continued, indicating the gains may be short-lived.
ABC
Related story: Video - Thousands flee Boko Haram violence
Monday, July 8, 2013
Friday, July 5, 2013
Nigeria's government website hacked by gay activist
An Irish hacker, angered by Nigeria's stance on homosexuality, has attacked Nigeria's official government website in an attempt to coerce President Goodluck Jonathan to veto a bill seeking to jail homosexuals.
The attack happened on Thursday night and normalcy only returned to the site at about 11.00 p.m. on Thursday. It is not known whether it was the government that regained control or whether the attackers simply suspended the attack.
The anti-gay bill, passed by Nigeria's National Assembly and generously supported by Nigerians, seeks to jail convicted homosexuals for 14 years.
"Nobody should live in fear of being jailed, when their only action is loving another consenting adult, regardless of gender," the Irish hacker, Paddyhack said.
A message left on the defaced website gave the president 72 hours to "renounce and veto this Bill... "
"Failure to follow our order will unleash a torrent of fury aimed directly at the direction of your administration, starting with some startling but unsurprising evidence of corruption in your ranks,"the hacker, who also claims to be a member of the global Anonymous group, said.
"No need to start destroying evidence. I already have it," the hacker declared.
The hacked website, Nigeria.gov.ng, is Nigeria's official website. It is the equivalent of UK's gov.uk and U.S' USA.gov. It is managed by Nigeria's information ministry.
The Thursday night attack was a continuation of an #opNigeria the attacker launched on July 1. Despite announcing his intention hours before hijacking the website, Nigeria's Information Ministry's web administrators appear unable to avert the attack.
"Just over two hours to launch of #OpNigeria," the attacker announced in his twitter diary.
The spokesperson of the ministry, Joseph Mutuah, could not explain the attacks when pressed for reasons the government is unable to provide appropriate security for its web infrastructure.
He likened it to armed robbers breaking into one's property. "They are hackers," he said.
The ICT department of the Information Ministry received N63.5 million from the national treasury this year. Of this amount, N10 million was set aside for the management of the website.
Nigeria cyber protest culture
Although the web profile of the attack suggests Irish origins, it is difficult to isolate the incident from Nigeria's growing culture of cyber activism.
Cyber warfare is fast becoming a major protest tool for Nigeria's social media community. Besides using the Internet to disseminate information, protesters use hacking skills to get government officials' attention to civil issues.
After playing a major role in the global Occupy Movement, the Internet anarchy group, called Anarchy, is lending support to clones in developing countries, including Nigeria.
Various clones operating in Nigeria have carried out operations against government Internet infrastructures as a means of protesting unfavourable policies, mostly as support for a protest in the social media community.
Early in January 2012, during the Occupy Nigeria protest, Nigeria Cyber Hack-activists, the lead clone of Anonymous, began a "Tell Them How You Feel" campaign. The group bombarded mobile phone lines of Nigerian politicians, lawmakers and top government functionaries - including the Vice president - with a million text messages each.
Thereafter, these phone numbers were published by the group on social media, inviting Nigerians to call or text them to denounce the policy.
Nigeria Cyber Hack-activist, believed to be made up of mostly young people, have been carrying out attacks on government Internet infrastructure since 2010. It was a means of protesting the lavish expenditure of the government on Nigeria's 50th anniversary - in the face of worsening poverty and infrastructure decay. The group launched attacks that crippled many government websites.
The group has a history of defacing government websites. In May 2011, they ruined several government websites, including the National Assembly's, in a campaign - Op-Nigeria - targeted at forcing government to cut waste and sign the Freedom of Information Act.
After the Occupy Nigeria protest, Nigeria Cyber Hack-activists announced it was planning an attack on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission's website in a bid to push the anti-corruption commission into arresting Messrs Femi Otedola and Mike Adenuga, earlier fingered as members of a cabal that have fuelled corruption within the oil industry.
But a day before the group's planned attack, the EFCC website was brought down.
No other group claimed responsibility for the attack.
The unannounced attack on EFCC's website suggested there were other hack groups operating in Nigeria.
In 2012 alone, up to eight hack groups, with focused operations on Nigeria, sprang up in the cyberspace - including Anonymous Nigeria, Ibomhacktivist, and the Op-Arik - used to taunt Arik Air, Nigeria's leading airline, for poor customer services.
The radical, faceless, and irrepressible groups threatened to upload stuxnet - a deadly computer worm discovered in 2010 - on Shell flow station in the oil rich Niger Delta after the government threatened them with treason and arrests.
They warned that Nigeria's cyber infrastructure was insecure and would overthrow it if the government does not meet their demands to stop corruption and political patronage in Nigeria, cut waste in governance, and prosecute members of the cabal.
Although the Nigerian government is yet to meet these conditions, the hackers have since gone under, remaining silent even on the latest attacks. It is now unclear whether the latest vandalization of Nigeria's cyber infrastructure is being carried out by them or foreign cyber-warlords.
The attack happened on Thursday night and normalcy only returned to the site at about 11.00 p.m. on Thursday. It is not known whether it was the government that regained control or whether the attackers simply suspended the attack.
The anti-gay bill, passed by Nigeria's National Assembly and generously supported by Nigerians, seeks to jail convicted homosexuals for 14 years.
"Nobody should live in fear of being jailed, when their only action is loving another consenting adult, regardless of gender," the Irish hacker, Paddyhack said.
A message left on the defaced website gave the president 72 hours to "renounce and veto this Bill... "
"Failure to follow our order will unleash a torrent of fury aimed directly at the direction of your administration, starting with some startling but unsurprising evidence of corruption in your ranks,"the hacker, who also claims to be a member of the global Anonymous group, said.
"No need to start destroying evidence. I already have it," the hacker declared.
The hacked website, Nigeria.gov.ng, is Nigeria's official website. It is the equivalent of UK's gov.uk and U.S' USA.gov. It is managed by Nigeria's information ministry.
The Thursday night attack was a continuation of an #opNigeria the attacker launched on July 1. Despite announcing his intention hours before hijacking the website, Nigeria's Information Ministry's web administrators appear unable to avert the attack.
"Just over two hours to launch of #OpNigeria," the attacker announced in his twitter diary.
The spokesperson of the ministry, Joseph Mutuah, could not explain the attacks when pressed for reasons the government is unable to provide appropriate security for its web infrastructure.
He likened it to armed robbers breaking into one's property. "They are hackers," he said.
The ICT department of the Information Ministry received N63.5 million from the national treasury this year. Of this amount, N10 million was set aside for the management of the website.
Nigeria cyber protest culture
Although the web profile of the attack suggests Irish origins, it is difficult to isolate the incident from Nigeria's growing culture of cyber activism.
Cyber warfare is fast becoming a major protest tool for Nigeria's social media community. Besides using the Internet to disseminate information, protesters use hacking skills to get government officials' attention to civil issues.
After playing a major role in the global Occupy Movement, the Internet anarchy group, called Anarchy, is lending support to clones in developing countries, including Nigeria.
Various clones operating in Nigeria have carried out operations against government Internet infrastructures as a means of protesting unfavourable policies, mostly as support for a protest in the social media community.
Early in January 2012, during the Occupy Nigeria protest, Nigeria Cyber Hack-activists, the lead clone of Anonymous, began a "Tell Them How You Feel" campaign. The group bombarded mobile phone lines of Nigerian politicians, lawmakers and top government functionaries - including the Vice president - with a million text messages each.
Thereafter, these phone numbers were published by the group on social media, inviting Nigerians to call or text them to denounce the policy.
Nigeria Cyber Hack-activist, believed to be made up of mostly young people, have been carrying out attacks on government Internet infrastructure since 2010. It was a means of protesting the lavish expenditure of the government on Nigeria's 50th anniversary - in the face of worsening poverty and infrastructure decay. The group launched attacks that crippled many government websites.
The group has a history of defacing government websites. In May 2011, they ruined several government websites, including the National Assembly's, in a campaign - Op-Nigeria - targeted at forcing government to cut waste and sign the Freedom of Information Act.
After the Occupy Nigeria protest, Nigeria Cyber Hack-activists announced it was planning an attack on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission's website in a bid to push the anti-corruption commission into arresting Messrs Femi Otedola and Mike Adenuga, earlier fingered as members of a cabal that have fuelled corruption within the oil industry.
But a day before the group's planned attack, the EFCC website was brought down.
No other group claimed responsibility for the attack.
The unannounced attack on EFCC's website suggested there were other hack groups operating in Nigeria.
In 2012 alone, up to eight hack groups, with focused operations on Nigeria, sprang up in the cyberspace - including Anonymous Nigeria, Ibomhacktivist, and the Op-Arik - used to taunt Arik Air, Nigeria's leading airline, for poor customer services.
The radical, faceless, and irrepressible groups threatened to upload stuxnet - a deadly computer worm discovered in 2010 - on Shell flow station in the oil rich Niger Delta after the government threatened them with treason and arrests.
They warned that Nigeria's cyber infrastructure was insecure and would overthrow it if the government does not meet their demands to stop corruption and political patronage in Nigeria, cut waste in governance, and prosecute members of the cabal.
Although the Nigerian government is yet to meet these conditions, the hackers have since gone under, remaining silent even on the latest attacks. It is now unclear whether the latest vandalization of Nigeria's cyber infrastructure is being carried out by them or foreign cyber-warlords.
Related stories: 92 percent of Nigerians support anit-gay law
Thursday, July 4, 2013
4,000 Nigerian refugees in Cameroon
Cameroon has received 4 000 refugees fleeing a Nigerian military offensive against Islamists in the north, the governor of the affected region said on Wednesday, bringing total refugee numbers from the conflict to at least 10 000.
Since mid-May, Nigerian forces have been engaged in a concerted crackdown against the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, bombing their bases, raiding neighbourhoods where they are suspected to be hiding and cutting phone lines.
The remote, semi-desert region where the operation is being carried out is sparsely populated.
“There are 4 000 refugees who have come in from Nigeria and we are working out a programme with the International Red Cross to set up a refugee camp for them near the town of Mokolo,” Cameroon's Far-North region governor Fonka Awa said.
Nigeria's military was not immediately available for comment. The local Red Cross said it was still investigating.
The figure was much lower than that given by Hamed Jaha, a member of parliament in Nigeria's Borno state, who said on Monday that 20 000 had fled from the Nigerian border towns of Ashigashiya and Ngoshe into Cameroon after army raids.
Last month, the UN refugee agency said it had registered 6 000 refugees from Nigeria in neighbouring Niger.
Boko Haram has become the biggest risk to stability in Nigeria, Africa's top oil producer and second largest economy, but rights groups and aid agencies fear that the longer the offensive against it goes on, the more the local population will suffer.
A government rights watchdog said this week that violence since President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in May had forced thousands of farmers to flee their land. It said the exodus could trigger a food crisis.
The National Human Rights Commission said it had credible reports of killings, torture, rape and arbitrary detention by security forces. Nigerian authorities have yet to respond.
Since mid-May, Nigerian forces have been engaged in a concerted crackdown against the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, bombing their bases, raiding neighbourhoods where they are suspected to be hiding and cutting phone lines.
The remote, semi-desert region where the operation is being carried out is sparsely populated.
“There are 4 000 refugees who have come in from Nigeria and we are working out a programme with the International Red Cross to set up a refugee camp for them near the town of Mokolo,” Cameroon's Far-North region governor Fonka Awa said.
Nigeria's military was not immediately available for comment. The local Red Cross said it was still investigating.
The figure was much lower than that given by Hamed Jaha, a member of parliament in Nigeria's Borno state, who said on Monday that 20 000 had fled from the Nigerian border towns of Ashigashiya and Ngoshe into Cameroon after army raids.
Last month, the UN refugee agency said it had registered 6 000 refugees from Nigeria in neighbouring Niger.
Boko Haram has become the biggest risk to stability in Nigeria, Africa's top oil producer and second largest economy, but rights groups and aid agencies fear that the longer the offensive against it goes on, the more the local population will suffer.
A government rights watchdog said this week that violence since President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in May had forced thousands of farmers to flee their land. It said the exodus could trigger a food crisis.
The National Human Rights Commission said it had credible reports of killings, torture, rape and arbitrary detention by security forces. Nigerian authorities have yet to respond.
Related story: Thousands of Nigerians flee country due to violence
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Video - National theatre of Nigeria faces closure
The Nigerian government is planning to turn the country's national theatre into a hotel and shopping mall. The proposals have upset actors, threatre groups and artists but the government says the plans will generate money and create employment.
Gilbert Chagoury poised to build city for the elite in Nigeria
Africa's cities are running out of land, prompting a real-estate
developer here to erect what might be Africa's ritziest district on a
beach long known as a haven for day laborers and beer tipplers.
The shacks that crowded the shoreline called Bar Beach are gone, replaced by construction tents. Families who squatted here were evicted. For the past four years, a Lebanese-Nigerian property developer has hosed sand into the ocean, creating new land for planned jogging paths, yacht jetties and condominiums with helipads for 250,000 opulent Nigerians.
The new Eko Atlantic township is emblematic of a booming business in Africa in which developers build walled-off cities for the very rich on a continent that is still the world's poorest.
Developer Gilbert Chagoury, founder of Nigeria's Chagoury Group, is the epitome of Africa's moneyed class: Aside from a friendship with Bill Clinton, whose 1996 presidential campaign he helped fund, Mr. Chagoury boasts an ambassadorship from St. Lucia to the Vatican and a gallery in the Louvre named after him and his wife, both contributors.
Flush with funding from French banks that are enticed by Africa's rapid growth, the 67-year-old Mr. Chagoury is aiming to cap his career with the most colossal real-estate project in West Africa.
"This is going to be the equivalent of Champs Élysées in Paris or Fifth Avenue in New York," says David Frame, managing director of South EnergX, a construction unit of Chagoury Group. He was standing on a gravel road that will be paved into an eight-lane boulevard, ending at a gated exit into the rest of Lagos.
Africa has the world's fastest-growing cities, according to the United Nations. Its current urban population of 450 million is expected to triple in the next four decades.
As vacant land vanishes in African cities, foreign investors are responding with the creation of new cities out of forests, grasslands and landfill. Investors expect to wring big profits from offering Africa's wealthy places to live, work and shop away from the crumbling infrastructure and squalor of old cities.
But those projects have come under fire from critics who point out that they will in no way alleviate the housing crisis hitting the majority of the population. In Lagos, few will be able to afford Eko Atlantic's glass tower condos.
Meanwhile, some of these gargantuan projects are struggling. Renaissance Capital Financial Holdings Ltd. of Moscow plans to build a city for 62,000 people on a coffee farm outside Nairobi, Kenya, and a similar-size project on a pepper field near Ghana's capital of Accra.
The coffee farm in Kenya is still just that, as Renaissance works out a dispute with shareholders. The project in Ghana is mired in a disagreement between local chiefs over who owns the pepper field.
China International Trust and Investment Corp. built a $3.5 billion city for 500,000 people near Angola's capital, Luanda. The suburb opened in 2011 but remains a ghost town, as the government strains to sell the $200,000 condos to a population whose per-capita income is $6,000 a year.
Mr. Chagoury hopes that Eko Atlantic will be different. Project executives point to Lagos's population of oil-rich elites, which is both larger than that of Luanda's and readier to pay top dollar for clean streets and modern infrastructure. They decline to say how much Eko Atlantic will cost, other to say it will be "in the billions" of dollars.
Their city, Lagos, is crowded and chaotic. Its population grows by nine people every 10 minutes, according to the U.N., which estimates that Lagos has 11 million people and is the world's fastest-growing megacity. The Nigerian government puts the city's total population at 21 million.
Even in posh neighborhoods, sewage bubbles up from open ditches. For want of office towers, hundreds of companies squeeze their headquarters into moldy midcentury ranch houses. At lunch, many companies turn off their lights to rest chugging electric generators. To escape choking traffic, many elites commute by helicopter or yacht.
What little housing there is for Nigeria's growing middle class is pricey. Average rent on a three-bedroom apartment in downtown Lagos is $3,624 a month, according to Dubai-based research firm Reidin. Landlords usually expect two years of rent in advance, preferably paid in U.S. dollars. It is a challenge for Nigeria's middle class, whose income averages about $600 a month, according to Renaissance Capital.
Buying is just as tough. City records on land ownership are a mess, stockpiled or missing. Swindles involving forged titles and the fraudulent sale of villas are common.
Home loans come with double-digit interest rates. In a country of 167 million people, there are only 20,000 mortgages, according to Nigeria's finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
To keep pace, construction activity expands by 13% a year, according to government statistics. Architect Ade Laoye estimates that Lagos needs at least needs 10,000 additional houses a year.
"We don't have the architects, electricians, bricklayers, engineers, the builders," Mr. Laoye says.
One person who does have resources is Mr. Chagoury, a Nigerian-born construction magnate. He got his first taste of city-making in the 1990s, when the government hired him to construct a small banana-shaped peninsula now dotted with million-dollar homes.
In 2003, Lagos's government approached Mr. Chagoury with a problem. Waves were crashing over Bar Beach, washing away some of the drug scene, but also flooding shore-side avenues and wetting the lobbies of important Nigerian companies.
He returned with an offer to build a sea wall without charge. In return, Lagos's government allowed his company to dredge sand from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean—and shoot it out of a hose to create 3.9 square miles of beach.
The square mile poured so far is a panorama of sand, resembling the Sahara. Manhole covers pop up several feet above the dunes as the skeletal beginnings of a drainage system. Near the ocean, cranes drop X-shaped blocks to make a sea wall.
Mr. Chagoury declined requests for an interview. But project executives say that they already have sold all but two of the several dozen building sites on the sandlot. Buyers plan an international school, high-rise condos, spas, headquarters for several oil companies, a conference center shaped like the sails of a boat and a U-shaped office tower called Unity.
Lower-end developers worry such endeavors will inflate the cost of building materials for years to come. An already stretched supply of bricklayers and cement mixers will leave to work here.
Developers like Michel El Chemor are unapologetic about catering to the top end of Nigeria's property market. He bought a plot from Mr. Chagoury for the site's first skyscraper: a $50 million, 24-story condo called Eko Pearl. It will peer out over a marina—and the smog and skyline of Lagos.
"I'm sorry to say, but it's chaos in Lagos," he says. "They're going to need to destroy what they had before and rebuild it, which will take a long time."
Wall Street Journal
Related story: Nigeria's growing middle class
The shacks that crowded the shoreline called Bar Beach are gone, replaced by construction tents. Families who squatted here were evicted. For the past four years, a Lebanese-Nigerian property developer has hosed sand into the ocean, creating new land for planned jogging paths, yacht jetties and condominiums with helipads for 250,000 opulent Nigerians.
The new Eko Atlantic township is emblematic of a booming business in Africa in which developers build walled-off cities for the very rich on a continent that is still the world's poorest.
Developer Gilbert Chagoury, founder of Nigeria's Chagoury Group, is the epitome of Africa's moneyed class: Aside from a friendship with Bill Clinton, whose 1996 presidential campaign he helped fund, Mr. Chagoury boasts an ambassadorship from St. Lucia to the Vatican and a gallery in the Louvre named after him and his wife, both contributors.
Flush with funding from French banks that are enticed by Africa's rapid growth, the 67-year-old Mr. Chagoury is aiming to cap his career with the most colossal real-estate project in West Africa.
"This is going to be the equivalent of Champs Élysées in Paris or Fifth Avenue in New York," says David Frame, managing director of South EnergX, a construction unit of Chagoury Group. He was standing on a gravel road that will be paved into an eight-lane boulevard, ending at a gated exit into the rest of Lagos.
Africa has the world's fastest-growing cities, according to the United Nations. Its current urban population of 450 million is expected to triple in the next four decades.
As vacant land vanishes in African cities, foreign investors are responding with the creation of new cities out of forests, grasslands and landfill. Investors expect to wring big profits from offering Africa's wealthy places to live, work and shop away from the crumbling infrastructure and squalor of old cities.
But those projects have come under fire from critics who point out that they will in no way alleviate the housing crisis hitting the majority of the population. In Lagos, few will be able to afford Eko Atlantic's glass tower condos.
Meanwhile, some of these gargantuan projects are struggling. Renaissance Capital Financial Holdings Ltd. of Moscow plans to build a city for 62,000 people on a coffee farm outside Nairobi, Kenya, and a similar-size project on a pepper field near Ghana's capital of Accra.
The coffee farm in Kenya is still just that, as Renaissance works out a dispute with shareholders. The project in Ghana is mired in a disagreement between local chiefs over who owns the pepper field.
China International Trust and Investment Corp. built a $3.5 billion city for 500,000 people near Angola's capital, Luanda. The suburb opened in 2011 but remains a ghost town, as the government strains to sell the $200,000 condos to a population whose per-capita income is $6,000 a year.
Mr. Chagoury hopes that Eko Atlantic will be different. Project executives point to Lagos's population of oil-rich elites, which is both larger than that of Luanda's and readier to pay top dollar for clean streets and modern infrastructure. They decline to say how much Eko Atlantic will cost, other to say it will be "in the billions" of dollars.
Their city, Lagos, is crowded and chaotic. Its population grows by nine people every 10 minutes, according to the U.N., which estimates that Lagos has 11 million people and is the world's fastest-growing megacity. The Nigerian government puts the city's total population at 21 million.
Even in posh neighborhoods, sewage bubbles up from open ditches. For want of office towers, hundreds of companies squeeze their headquarters into moldy midcentury ranch houses. At lunch, many companies turn off their lights to rest chugging electric generators. To escape choking traffic, many elites commute by helicopter or yacht.
What little housing there is for Nigeria's growing middle class is pricey. Average rent on a three-bedroom apartment in downtown Lagos is $3,624 a month, according to Dubai-based research firm Reidin. Landlords usually expect two years of rent in advance, preferably paid in U.S. dollars. It is a challenge for Nigeria's middle class, whose income averages about $600 a month, according to Renaissance Capital.
Buying is just as tough. City records on land ownership are a mess, stockpiled or missing. Swindles involving forged titles and the fraudulent sale of villas are common.
Home loans come with double-digit interest rates. In a country of 167 million people, there are only 20,000 mortgages, according to Nigeria's finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
To keep pace, construction activity expands by 13% a year, according to government statistics. Architect Ade Laoye estimates that Lagos needs at least needs 10,000 additional houses a year.
"We don't have the architects, electricians, bricklayers, engineers, the builders," Mr. Laoye says.
One person who does have resources is Mr. Chagoury, a Nigerian-born construction magnate. He got his first taste of city-making in the 1990s, when the government hired him to construct a small banana-shaped peninsula now dotted with million-dollar homes.
In 2003, Lagos's government approached Mr. Chagoury with a problem. Waves were crashing over Bar Beach, washing away some of the drug scene, but also flooding shore-side avenues and wetting the lobbies of important Nigerian companies.
He returned with an offer to build a sea wall without charge. In return, Lagos's government allowed his company to dredge sand from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean—and shoot it out of a hose to create 3.9 square miles of beach.
The square mile poured so far is a panorama of sand, resembling the Sahara. Manhole covers pop up several feet above the dunes as the skeletal beginnings of a drainage system. Near the ocean, cranes drop X-shaped blocks to make a sea wall.
Mr. Chagoury declined requests for an interview. But project executives say that they already have sold all but two of the several dozen building sites on the sandlot. Buyers plan an international school, high-rise condos, spas, headquarters for several oil companies, a conference center shaped like the sails of a boat and a U-shaped office tower called Unity.
Lower-end developers worry such endeavors will inflate the cost of building materials for years to come. An already stretched supply of bricklayers and cement mixers will leave to work here.
Developers like Michel El Chemor are unapologetic about catering to the top end of Nigeria's property market. He bought a plot from Mr. Chagoury for the site's first skyscraper: a $50 million, 24-story condo called Eko Pearl. It will peer out over a marina—and the smog and skyline of Lagos.
"I'm sorry to say, but it's chaos in Lagos," he says. "They're going to need to destroy what they had before and rebuild it, which will take a long time."
Wall Street Journal
Related story: Nigeria's growing middle class
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