Eko Atlantic, a new face in impressive urban construction in Nigeria, set records when it recently announced the successful reclamation of 5,000,000 square metres of land from the sea through its project.
Eko Atlantic, the idealised new city for Lagos, Nigeria drew outstanding presidential praise from both the Nigerian President, Goodluck Jonathan, and the former President of the United States of America, Bill Clinton during a dedication ceremony marking this milestone event.
The interesting Eko Atlantic land reclamation project was initiated in February 2008, with a 7-year unearthing operation planning to re-create 8,000 square metres of new land every day.
Aiming to build what they wanted to name, 'The Great Wall of Lagos', the Chagoury Group - developers and planners of Eko Atlantic, based in Lagos, Nigeria, zealously endeavoured to protect Victoria Island from coastal erosion due to the Atlantic Ocean forces.
Describing the development of Eko Atlantic as an outstanding initiative, President Jonathan said, "This landmark event is continuing the good news narrative that Nigeria must now embrace permanently. You cannot be hearing only ugly stories. Eko Atlantic City is bringing us happiness and this happiness has come to stay."
Ever since the commitment was made by the developers, the revetment named 'The Great Wall of Lagos' has accomplished a feat of a distance covering three and a half kilometres. This accomplishment of recovering land from the sea, gives Nigeria half the land to build a new city.
The Great Wall has rediscovered the coastline of Victoria Island and restored it to where it was a century ago before coastal erosion began to disintegrate the coast and wash it away.
"This is an ingenious engineering feat," said President Clinton. "This is something I am telling you there will be countless numbers of people coming here to study. It is something you can be very proud of."
The developers and city planners of this new city aim at producing 10,000,000 square metres of land on completion, which shall be termed to be ripe for development and analogous in size to the skyscraper district of Manhattan in New York City.
Eko Atlantic is being designed with the aim to provide the space and infrastructure to house 250,000 people and become the workplace for a further 150,000.
