A coalition of erosion-ravaged communities in the Ilaje coastal area of Ondo State has threatened to bar all campaigns and voting along the coastline in the forthcoming general elections unless government begins shoreline protection and sea-defence projects.
It has also announced a peaceful mass demonstration to the Governor’s Office in Akure in November.
The Coalition of Ilaje Ravaged Coastal Communities (CIRCC), which describes itself as an umbrella body of all erosion-ravaged Ilaje communities, made the demands in a press communique dated 13 October 2026 and signed by its Chairman, Comr. Akingboye Thompson Omoyele. It was titled “An Existential SOS from the Ilaje Coastline,” under the theme “No Shoreline Protection, No Electoral Participation.”
“Total electoral non-cooperation”
The group said the decisions were reached at an emergency congress of the affected communities, which it said resolved unanimously that without the “immediate, comprehensive and verifiable award and mobilisation” of shoreline protection, sea-defence walls and embankment projects, there would be “total electoral non-cooperation.”
“No campaign, no voting, no political activities will be permitted across the entire Ilaje coastline in the forthcoming general elections,” the communique said.
Loss of homes, farms and livelihoods
The coalition said the Atlantic Ocean had submerged and destroyed homes, left farmlands “desolate” through saline intrusion, and washed away ancestral burial grounds. It said fishing, the communities’ primary occupation, had been crippled and that children now attend school “with the psychological trauma of imminent displacement.”
“We are becoming environmental refugees in our ancestral homeland,” it said.
Oil wealth and “abandonment”
The group contrasted the plight of residents with the oil and gas resources beneath the area. It said the Ilaje coastal corridor had for over six decades contributed to national wealth through crude oil exploration, while its indigenous people were “systematically abandoned to the mercy of a rampaging Atlantic Ocean.”
It said official responses had consistently described shoreline protection as financially prohibitive and technically unfeasible, and questioned that position.
“If our terrain is too costly to protect, why is it not too costly to exploit?” the coalition asked. “If Ilaje crude is sweet enough to power the nation, why are Ilaje lives not precious enough to be preserved?”
It called it “a gross contradiction” to deem the land viable for exploitation but unviable for protection, describing the situation as “exploitation without responsibility, extraction without protection.”
Planned demonstration
The coalition said it would stage a “peaceful, lawful, non-violent and disciplined” demonstration to the Governor’s Office in Akure in November 2026 to formally present its charter of demands. It did not give a date.
It also invited the media, civil society organisations, environmental justice movements, human rights groups, youth and student bodies, faith-based organisations and “all well-meaning Nigerians” to join the protest.
The group described the erosion as “an environmental emergency of national and global significance,” a human rights violation and a threat to the country’s economic stability.
“We are not militants. We are not secessionists. We are endangered citizens demanding the right to exist,” the communique said. It ended with the warning: “Protect it, or forfeit our mandate.”
