hapless swimmers out into the
Gulf, never to be seen again.
The same rips are wreaking havoc
amongst a disorganised swell as
our videographer scrambles around
on the breakwall, trying to find a
good angle to film from.
“Oh man, I hope they don’t
shoot him!” Micheletti says in the
lineup. With his tripod hoisted
over his shoulder and his t-shirt
wrapped around his head, the
videographer looks like a guerrilla
with a bazooka.
Micheletti had pointed out the
ominous military gunboats idling
in the channel of the harbour
earlier. The boats are painted black
so the pirates, who raid the ships
anchored out to sea, can’t spot
them giving chase.
“Sometimes the military guys
drink too much and get trigger
happy,” says Micheletti, urgently
waving the videographer down
from the top of the
breakwall. “You don’t really want
to give them any excuse.”
The videographer reluctantly
gives up and gradually everyone
heads in until Aliotti and I are
the only surfers left in the lineup,
waiting patiently for a well-formed
wave that refuses to materialise.
“This is just like home,” Aliotti
had said the previous afternoon,
referring to the daily cross-shore
that blows into the left, much like
the Caribbean island of St Martin
where he was raised on a staple
diet of windswell and ramps.
Somehow he also developed an
affinity for dredging barrels, and
throws himself at either with no
fear of consequence.
We’re about to call it quits
when the tide shifts and the
Harmattan begins to puff,
opening up the waves. A solid set
bounces against thebreakwall and spits. Five minutes
later there’s another, then another,
and the Frenchman is suddenly
engaged in an hour-long tube duel
with himself.
“Shit, man, it’s getting really
shallow out here,” he laughs,
paddling back out after a thick
double-up. His elbow and hip are
raw and bleeding from where the
wave compressed him into the
sand. A few waves later Aliotti gets
obliterated in a closeout and his
board smashes into the side of his
face. His right eye immediately
starts swelling up with the first
signs of a puffy blue shiner, but he
stays out and threads a long, clean
barrel on his very next wave.
“Who would have thought it’s
possible to get waves like this in
Nigeria?” he asks.Across the channel, a handful
of shiny new skyscrapers poke
into the sky like metallic flowers,
framed by the fishing huts of
Tarkwa Bay. Millions of cubic
metres of sand have been pumped
out to create the foundation for
this new development; an exclusive
Dubai-style project called Eko
Atlantic, which will house over a
quarter million people in luxury
apartments and office space once
complete. Micheletti had told us
about incredible new waves that
had sprung up on the corners of
this reclaimed land and then died
just as quickly when some subtle
nuance in the dredging changed.
Five miles away, across the
gridlocked