Wazobaa-Wazobia-Yoruba-Hausa-Igbo-Nigeria-News

By Michael Chika Umudu

Erosion washes down South-Eastern Nigeria

The future seems bleak for most communities in the south eastern Nigerian as gullies of different sizes now riddle the region. Each state in the region has its own share of the menace. This rainy season has raised more questions about the readiness of both the states and federal governments to tackle the monster as more erosions continued to eat-up the scarce land in the region.

In the heat of this year’s rainy season, many villages and towns became unreachable owing to the gullies. Some people could not enter their houses with vehicles particularly in the rural areas where flooding makes most roads impassable. In some cases, people lost their houses as well as economic trees to the gullies. The numbers of the displaced are in the increase making many people to become refugees in their own land.

The situation seems worse in Anambra State. From Nanka and Oko, both in Orumba North Local Government Area to Nneni in Idemmili Local Government Area as well as Ekwulumulli in Nnewi South Local Government Area the situation remains the same. The menace has continued over the years and nothing seems to have been done to stop the erosions.

The havoc caused by the erosions is at a very high scale. Still government has not taken any action towards saving the environment from further degradation. As the region continues to record new erosions and the expansion of the old ones, it has become obvious that in the near future the region will find itself in a terrible environmental condition.

It seems that government has forgotten that the environment is the primary platform in which any meaningful development takes place. The neglect of the environment even in the face of apparent threat is unimaginable in a society under self rule. People want to hear the government promise them new roads, new shopping complexes, airports, electricity, new this and mega that, but few care about the environment which sustains us all.

In a swoop, a couple of years ago, Ekwulobia-Umunze Road was cut off by erosion at the polytechnic town of Oko. Although some repairs were carried out to put the road into use again but up till date danger stares in the face of the road users as well as those living close to the erosion. Similarly, recently, the age long Nanka erosion swallowed houses at Isiakpuenu village in Ifite, Nanka. Apart from this monstrous erosion, Nanka is under siege of many other erosions that have made living difficult for many villages in community.

The behaviour of the people towards the environment is not anything better. Indiscriminate house construction and other activities on the land make the land to be prone to such disasters. No development policy seems to have been evolved either by the government or the affected communities to address the problem; if any policy exists, it surely not operational.