URBANISM SATIRE SERIES
Seasons are changing. Climate is shifting. And much of it is sponsored by our own habits.
We helped the ice to melt because we refused to plant trees.
We sand-filled wetlands and called it development.
We paved everything green because maintenance felt inconvenient.
We encouraged more fossil fuels and fewer alternatives.
We insisted everyone must drive alone instead of pooling.
We let our cities choke on traffic while our lungs quietly took notes.
Yet global warming still sounds like a foreign documentary. Something for polar bears, ice caps, and serious men in suits at international conferences — not for estates in Lekki, Aguigi, Ogombo or streets in Surulere that now double as rivers after a single downpour.
Right on cue, it floated in confidently, announcing the arrival of harmattan season. We prepared for its old friend to follow — that familiar companion with morning fog, cracked lips, cold air, afternoon dust, and the faint scent of dry leaves in the wind.
But harmattan sent no apology. No notice. No memo.
It simply went on sick leave.
Instead, the rains — apparently offended by our lack of regard for greens and fauna — decided to gatecrash the calendar. They did not arrive politely. They arrived with attitude. The heavens opened their floodgates not once, not twice, not thrice, but four times within the first twenty days of the new year.
At that point, even the seasons looked confused.
Dry season was working from home. Rainy season had started freelancing.
Caught unawares, our long-neglected drains rose to the occasion … not as infrastructure, but as accomplices. Streets became canals. Living rooms upgraded themselves into swimming pools. Estates learned the hard way that sand-filled wetlands make poor flood defences.
We called it “unusual weather.”
We said, “This January rain is strange.”
We shook our heads, took pictures, posted online, and moved on.
Because calling it what it truly is … climate change. This makes the conversation uncomfortable.
Seasons are changing. Climate is shifting. And much of it is sponsored by our own habits.
We helped the ice to melt because we refused to plant trees.
We sand-filled wetlands and called it development.
We paved everything green because maintenance felt inconvenient.
We encouraged more fossil fuels and fewer alternatives.
We insisted everyone must drive alone instead of pooling.
We let our cities choke on traffic while our lungs quietly took notes.
Yet global warming still sounds like a foreign documentary. Something for polar bears, ice caps, and serious men in suits at international conferences — not for estates in Lekki, Agungi, Ogombo or streets in Surulere that now double as rivers after a single downpour.
Meanwhile, the ocean is not debating. It is measuring.
Sea level rise doesn’t shout. It inches forward, patiently, like a landlord who already knows your rent is due.
So what do we do?
We embrace sustainability, not as a slogan, but as a habit.
We make the 5Rs our daily mantra — Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle.
We plant trees instead of excuses.
We protect wetlands instead of pricing them per plot.
We move people and products by trains instead of unleashing thousands of trailers onto fragile roads.
And when respiratory diseases rise and the air grows heavier, let us not blame witches from distant villages. Let us look closer — at ourselves, and at governments that treat environmental policy as ceremonial speech instead of serious business.
So yes, kindly carry your umbrella in January.
Harmattan is on sick leave.
The climate has entered its own era of urban renewal.
MORAL OF THE SATIRE
Floods are not acts of God when drains are acts of neglect.
When you turn parks into parking lots, don’t be surprised when rain turns roads into rivers.
Every wetland we sand-fill today becomes tomorrow’s disaster zone.
A grey city heats faster, floods quicker, and breathes poorer.
Trees are cheaper than sandbags, and wetlands are better than committees.
The climate does not read policy documents — it only reads our actions.
Climate change may be global, but environmental failure is always local.
We built the flood. The rain just pressed “send.”