Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway: Saving Stubbs Creek – Abdul Mahmud

By Abdul Mahmud

Stubbs Creek Forest Reserve stands as a measure of collective wisdom. The debate surrounding the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway and its proposed route through this protected ecosystem has exposed a deeper struggle over values, law, and responsibility in a time of climate vulnerability. What confronts Akwa-Ibom State goes beyond engineering preference. A decision of this magnitude defines how development will be understood and practised in the years ahead. For close to a century, Stubbs Creek had enjoyed formal protection because of qualities no budgetary allocation can replace. Dense mangrove systems, freshwater swamps, and rainforest corridors combine to regulate water flow, absorb carbon, and sustain biodiversity across several local government areas.

These ecological services operate silently but relentlessly, shielding coastal communities from floods, moderating temperatures, and sustaining fisheries and forest-dependent livelihoods. Once disrupted, restoration remains uncertain and often impossible.

The legal architecture surrounding forest reserves exists to protect communities from impulsive decisions driven by short-term political advantage. Forest laws in Akwa-Ibom State require clear and public procedures before any portion of a reserve can lose its protected status. Environmental legislation at the federal level demands scientific evaluation before approval of projects likely to cause significant ecological change. These safeguards recognise a simple truth. Damage to complex ecosystems cannot be undone by apologies or promises of mitigation.

Arguments offered in defence of the highway route lean heavily on governmental authority over land. Ownership, however, carries obligation. A reserve does not exist because land lacks alternative uses. A reserve exists because past experience taught harsh lessons about unrestrained exploitation. When government power overrides conservation without compliance with law and science, the result erodes trust and weakens institutions.
Stubbs Creek already bears scars from earlier intrusions. Abandoned corridors from past projects opened pathways for illegal logging and speculative clearing.

Access roads built for industrial ventures have accelerated deforestation far beyond their immediate footprints. Each new incision multiplies pressure, inviting settlers, timber merchants, and extractive activities deeper into the forest. Fragmentation follows, then degradation, then collapse.

Climate considerations intensify the stakes.

Akwa-Ibom State sits within a fragile coastal zone threatened by sea level rise and extreme weather events. Forest reserves such as Stubbs Creek function as natural infrastructure, buffering storm surges and reducing erosion. Weakening this defence while investing heavily in concrete and asphalt reflects a misunderstanding of security. Environmental stability forms the foundation upon which economic activity depends. However, global experience offers guidance on choices facing policymakers. In the United States during the mid-twentieth century, plans to construct the Echo Park Dam within the Dinosaur National Monument triggered nationwide resistance. Environmentalists, scientists, and citizens raised voices with unusual force. Their stentorian campaigns reframed the debate from power generation to preservation of shared heritage.

The dam project collapsed, leaving a legacy that strengthened protection for parks and reserves across the country. India faced a similar crossroads with the Silent Valley rainforest. A proposed hydroelectric project threatened one of the subcontinent’s last tropical rainforests. Scholars, poets, and conservationists mobilised public opinions through research, writing, and legal action. Their advocacy succeeded. The forest gained national park status and continues to provide ecological services far exceeding projected benefits of the abandoned dam.

Across Africa, determined civic engagement has altered destructive trajectories. Kenya’s Green Belt Movement resisted deforestation through community organisation and persistent public challenge. Forests marked for conversion survived because citizens refused acquiescence. The late environmental campaigner, Wangari Maathai, refused to stay silent. Her stentorian voice provided a fillip to the campaigns. That struggle reshaped national attitudes toward conservation and earned global recognition for linking environmental protection with social justice. These cases demonstrate a consistent lesson. Development debates shift when voices refuse silence. Law gains strength when citizens demand enforcement. Science matters when decision makers acknowledge ecological limits.

Alternatives emerge when imagination replaces force.
Stubbs Creek presents an opportunity for such leadership. Communities opposing the highway route have articulated their demands with care. Roads, hospitals, schools, and industry remain welcome. What stands rejected involves a development model that disregards procedure, marginalises host communities, and discounts ecological cost. Such a stance aligns with constitutional citizenship rather than obstruction. Rerouting the highway around the reserve offers a practical compromise. Modern engineering accommodates sensitive landscapes through alignment changes and design innovation. Many nations treat protected areas as no-go-zones for major infrastructure, redirecting projects without sacrificing connectivity. Choosing this path would demonstrate respect for law, science, and community voice.

Public commitments to sustainable development lose meaning when contradicted by action. International climate agreements and national policy statements emphasise forest protection, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity conservation. Stubbs Creek stands as a tangible test of those promises. Allowing fragmentation of a protected forest undermines credibility and invites further erosion of safeguards elsewhere. Economic arguments often ignore long term costs. Flood damage, loss of fisheries, declining soil fertility, and health impacts from environmental degradation impose burdens far exceeding projected gains from a highway shortcut. Development measured solely by speed of movement fails to account for stability of life systems that support society.

Future generations will judge decisions taken today. They will inherit either a functioning ecosystem that continues its quiet labour or a scarred landscape remembered through reports and photographs. Leadership reveals itself through restraint as much as ambition. Choosing preservation over convenience signals confidence in planning capacity and respect for collective heritage. Saving Stubbs Creek calls for clarity of purpose. Law must guide action. Science must inform choice.

Community voice must carry weight. Development worthy of the name expands opportunity without erasing foundations of survival. Forest reserves represent investments made by past generations on behalf of the future. Squandering such investments impoverishes more than balance sheets. In moments of environmental reckoning, moderation rarely changes outcomes. History shows that only firm, principled, and stentorian advocacy alters destructive courses. Stubbs Creek deserves such advocacy. The forest speaks through flood control, climate moderation, and biodiversity. Our country and its subnational states must answer with wisdom equal to that gift.