'West Africa's longest beach' stretching 18 miles with beautiful blue waters

One beach inAfrica is a sprawling18 miles of land stretched against the glistening Atlantic ocean. The mammoth attraction is the largest of its kind in the West of the continent in the Akwa Ibom area of Nigeria.

The longest sand beach in the region runs alongside the Qua Iboe River estuary from Ibeno to James Town. It is the most popular tourist attraction in the Akwa Ibom State. There is an array of watersports on offer as well as swathes of people kicking around footballs and launching boats and kayaks out onto the ocean. It has a golf course sited, managed and used by Exxonmobil, though in recent times, it has tragically been abandoned.

The five star beach and gold resort remains and is a popular hotspot for business trips and luxury family stays. If you're in Africa for the festive period - consider making Ibeno beach your boxing day plans. Every December 26th, the beach receives tourists and holiday makers in their thousands who flock to the stretch of sand to see out the last days of the festive period.

One person enthused over their experience at the beach saying "What an Amazing place, went there with family from the UK, people were friendly, all smiling and happy. It was mind-blowing! the clean environment and smell of fresh breeze... would definitely go again. Awesome environment!!! I recommend!"

It is an outstanding spot of natural beauty with towering palm trees lining where the sand meets hard land. However, the beach has been subject to at least one oil spill in 2012, with community leaders claiming the first oil spill hit in 1998, according to The Times Of Nigeria.

In November 2012, an oil spill at an ExxonMobil facility offshore from the Niger Delta has spread at least 20 miles from its source, coating waters used by fishermen in a film of sludge.

A Reuters reporter visiting several parts of Akwa Ibom state saw a rainbow-tinted oil slick stretching for 20 miles from a pipeline that Exxon had shut down because of a leak a week ago. Locals scooped it into jerry cans, according to Reuters.

Mark Ward, the managing director of ExxonMobil's local unit, said a clean up had been mobilized, and he apologized to affected communities for the spill. Exxon said last Sunday it had shut a pipeline off the coast of Akwa Ibom state after an oil leak whose cause was unknown.

"This is the worst spill in this community since Exxon started its operations in the area," said Edet Asuquo, 40, a fisherman in the Mkpanak community, as women scooped oil into buckets. In some marshy areas, plants were poking out of the slick, not yet dead and blackened by the oil. The fishermen cannot fish any longer and have no alternative means of survival," Asuquo said.