‘The sea took everything away’: how Nigeria’s ‘Happy City’ is disappearing beneath the waves

More than half of Ayetoro – a Christian utopia founded in the 1940s – has been lost to the ocean, and its remaining people are running out of options In the early hours of 15 February 2019, the Atlantic Ocean came for Arowo Victoria’s livelihood. The 60-year-old retired midwife was asleep when neighbours began banging on her door, shouting that the sea had started covering buildings along the nearby coastline. By the time she got to her small shop, she discovered that the Atlantic had already swept it away, destroying the business she had built with borrowed money after retirement. “There was nothing I could save,” she says, staring at the shoreline where her shop once stood. “The sea took everything away.” After retiring from decades of helping women give birth, Victoria had taken out a loan to start a business that she had hoped would see her through retirement. Instead, the sea has left her with mounting debts and no business to help her repay it. “I am paying for something that doesn’t exist any more,” she says. “They come to collect their money every month.” Ayetoro was once known as Nigeria’s “Happy City” after it was founded by a Christian group