For over a century, the rhythm of Makoko was written on the water. It was a world built on stilts—a floating city where children learned to paddle before they could walk, and the horizon was a forest of wooden masts.
But the tide is finally going out. What generations of families called home is being reclaimed by the city it helped build.
The landscape is changing. Where there were once vibrant markets on canoes, there is now open water and debris. Thousands who have known no other life but the waterfront are now untethering their boats, watching a century of history drift away in the wake of urban expansion.
On the outskirts, families gather what remains. Roofing sheets are sold as scrap; memories are packed into narrow hulls. There is no anger in their eyes today—only the quiet, heavy realization that an era has reached its horizon.
Lagos moves forward, stretching toward a modern skyline of concrete and glass. But as the structures of Makoko fall, a unique chapter of human ingenuity and survival sinks beneath the surface, leaving behind only the ripples of what used to be.
The water remains. But the life built upon it… is now a ghost of the coast.
