Yet here we were, about to land in the
thick of Nigeria’s largest city, and it was
all because of the breakwall.
Lagos is actually a giant island, built
on reclaimed land and cut into slices by
the sprawling lagoon that seeps through
the metropolis and out to sea. Twenty-
one million people live here, squeezed
into every inch of available space. The
breakwall was built to protect the
expanding harbour and act as the city’s
last line of defence against the hungry
Atlantic Ocean. The fact that it created
one of the best man-made wedges in the
world was purely coincidental.
Our contact, John Micheletti, had
told us about a left on the other side of
the wall during that first trip, saying
it got even better than the right in the
dry season. His claims were met with
scepticism, until he started sending
photos. After a couple of years the
grainy cell phone images became too
tempting to ignore, and we somehow
convinced California-born stylist Luke
Davis and French tube maestro William
Aliotti it was worth investigating,
regardless of the headlines.
The plane engines roar as the landing
flaps drop down for the approach. Neon
skyscrapers beckon in the distance, but
below us lies a spider web of sandbanks
and slick black waterways, their edges
defined by thousands of gaslights burning
in the shacks that crowd the water’s edge.Micheletti is wearing his trademark
outfit of boardshorts, a vest and flip-
flops when he greets us outside the
airport. “Yeah, everybody’s scared of
Nigeria,” he says as we pile into his
truck. “But it’s not such a bad place.”
Italian born, Nigerian bred,
Micheletti has made Tarkwa Bay his
unlikely paradise. For work he helps
keep the lights on in Lagos, managing
the gas generators that power much of
the city during the frequent blackouts.
When he’s not negotiating a power
crisis, he makes the commute out to
Tarkwa where his family has built a
bungalow, literally a stone’s throw from
the wedge we’d surfed back in 2011.
“What about Boko Haram?”
photographer Alan Van Gysen asks
as we drive through the dizzy traffic,
noting the extremist group infamous for
kidnapping schoolgirls and coordinating
attacks using suicide bombers.
“They’re still around, but all that’s
in the north,” replies Micheletti. “It’s
not really news anymore, it’s quietened
down a lot. Now the problem is starting
again in the south, by the Niger Delta.
That’s oil country, that’s where theoriginal kidnapping started.”
The coastline of western Nigeria
is notoriously straight, absorbing a
surprising amount of swell from the
South Atlantic as it funnels through the
Gulf of Guinea. But the long stretches
of beach offer poor surf, with the
exception of Tarkwa Bay. Further to the
south, however, where Nigeria curves
into the oil-rich armpit of Africa, is a
coastline laden with potential.
“Around the Niger Delta, that’s
where things get really interesting,” says
Micheletti, alluding to the sandbanks,
rivermouths and bays that dent the
southern coastline. “But there’s no way
you’re going to surf there.”
Micheletti claims that the
government used to pay off the regional
chiefs to keep the peace and protect
the lucrative oil business. Even then,
the oil capital of Port Harcourt was
listed by Bloomberg as one of the most
dangerous cities in the world, with
abductions and murder commonplace.
Oil was first discovered in the Delta
in 1956. Shortly after independence,
Nigeria was ruled by a succession
of iron-fisted military leaders who
treated the country’s oil-rich coffers
like their personal piggy bank, the
worst of whom was General Sani
Abacha. Abacha was reputedly worth
$10 billion in 1998 when he kicked
the bucket. The infamous despot died
in the arms of two prostitutes after
his heart packed in, no longer able to
keep up with the good times. And so,
Nigeria stumbled into democratic rule.
Well, kind of. The military relinquished
power in theory, but not entirely in
practice, and much of the country
is still governed by the ever-present
spectre of AK47-wielding soldiers.
“The new president, Buhari, he’s
Muslim, so that’s eased the troubles in
the north,” Micheletti tells us. “But he’s
forgotten about the south, so the chiefs
down there are saying, OK, you don’t
want to pay us? We’ll show you... The
people down there are very different;
it’s a completely different language,
culture, the food’s different, the way
they look is different. What you’ve
got to remember is Nigeria was never
a country. The British came, drew a
border around the region with all these
different people and said, Right, now
you’re a country. That was always going
to be trouble.”
He pauses, as if it occurs to him that
perhaps this isn’t helping to put our
minds at ease. “But Lagos, Lagos is cool,
man,” he finally says. “You’ve just got to
know what you’re doing.”The afternoon haze sets in as the
sun lowers and Luke Davis goes
high. The heat is so oppressive that
through the middle of the day it’s a
mission just to go to the toilet. Once
the sun starts to set, the little Bay
in Lagos comes alive with villagers,
and surfers.