It was a cruise in timeless luxury as Thesaurus Bay celebrated its third anniversary with a tour of Lagos waterways on October 1, 2024, Nigeria’s independence day.
The celebration featured a host of events for guests who cruised the waterways in Thesaurus Bay’s luxury boats from one destination to another including Omu Creek, a visit to the beautiful, historic and magic gem Ito-omu Island, Giwa Gardens etc.
Remarking, Chairman, Thesaurus Group of Companies and Thesaurus Bay Limited, Bolaji Olasode, said: “The idea is to promote tourism and the beauty of Lagos waterways to not only Nigerians living in the country, but also those in diaspora as well as investors.We are trying to look into marine tourism investment. In the last stakeholders engagement we had with the ministry of Aquaculture we talked about how we can diversify into marine investment and animal welfare.
“We initiated zero traffic Lagos whereby our company moved a minimum of 1,200 people every day along Lagos waterways. We have four terminals and we also make sure we diversify into a lot of auxiliary investments such as water transportation, and other services in our terminal. We have been partnering with Lagos State government through the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) and they have been giving us support. We are looking at different types of opportunities such as animal welfare, creating endangered species protection areas along Lagos waterways, and a tour of Lagos submarine. We want to be the first company to deploy submarines for tourism for Lagos waterways on a national level and lots of economic marine investment. This is why we implore the government to come out with a strategy and a framework that will support private partnership.”
Also speaking, Lagos Area Manager of NIWA, Engineer Sarat Braimah, said: “Thesaurus Garden is one of our clients. They have a lot of boats for passengers within Lagos. We licensed their boats and they are all safety compliant. This is why we gave them the permit to move people on Lagos waterways.”
On measures taken by NIWA on waterways safety, Braimah said: “We do campaigns, awareness and inspection of the boats before registration. All the boats are quarterly inspected to make sure they are safety compliant and in good condition. We do marine surveys of the boat to be sure the boats are fit and have capacity to flow on our waterways. We have about 36 police officers attached to my office and the Navy working directly with us and marine police.”
The CEO, ACE Geosynthetics, Nigeria, Chuks Agwalla, an organisation responsible for providing solutions that support the environmental ecosystem especially when sustainable shorelines, said, “we are excited to be part of today’s event and it is good to be here. In Lagos our tourism potential is underrated especially when it comes to the inland waterways. The significance of this event is to tell the world that Lagos has great waterways potential.”