CIVIL servants, property developers and other residents of Igwogwo area of Amachai/Ogbozoma Quarters in Okpanam Town, Oshimili North Local Government Area, located within the Asaba capital territory of Delta State, are at the verge of losing their wealth to gully erosion that is threatening lives and property in the area.
The gully erosion site is a densely populated area with about 80 per cent of the residents being civil servants and people, who work and do business in Asaba, the Delta State capital. Aside from the erosion menaces, the community is also challenged by a poor road network critically begging for urgent attention.
Our correspondent, who visited the area, observed that the vicinity, which is now cut off, has been badly affected by the erosion menace for years now, even as houses of workers in the area are no longer safe.
Residents informed our correspondent that the gully started like a little runway where rainwater passed through some years ago and today, it has become a catastrophic gully and a disaster waiting to swallow up buildings, if urgent intervention is not provided.
A retired school Principal, Lady Lizzy Nmadu, told The Pointer that she was already at the risk of losing her home, if nothing was urgently done to rehabilitate the gully site that had cut off Igwogwo Quarters in Okpanam. “The gully wasn’t like this when they built this house for me. The gully is expanding as the day goes by. Even when I went to town, I could not access my house on my way coming after rain. I stopped there till four hours after the rain subsided before I moved to my house”.
Also, another civil servant living in the gully-prone and already threatened environment, Mr. Solomon Okeleko, said the wave of the flood whenever it rains threatened property and human existence “The gully is by the fence of one story building. I have been hearing that the wave of the water carries people when it rains, but we are not praying that should happen here before the government will come and intervene.
A youth President in the Okpanam community, Comrade Lucky Okolo, who narrated his ordeal, said: “The gully has been existing for more than ten years, and properties worth millions of naira with human lives are about to be lost in that environment, and this type of gully is not what community and individual can manage, hence, we are calling on the Delta State and the Federal Government, and international donor agencies to come to our rescue”.
An indigene in the Okpanam community, Chikwujibe Obe, who gave his experience, noted that the community had done its best to salvage the situation, but it was rather getting the more worrisome every day.
“We have been trying our best to stop and even to block the water coming out from the road and even from Issele- Azagba and another neighboring community here, but to no avail”, he revealed.
The residents said: “The internal roads within the Okpanam community are now nothing to write home about as they struggle to wriggle out every day from the community to attend to their work and businesses in Asaba and environs”.
The Delta State Project Coordinator of the Nigeria Erosion and Watershed Management Project (NEWMAP-EIB), Mr. Benedict Nwaukocha, who spoke to our correspondent on the environmental degradation in the Okpanam community, observed that the gully was a catastrophic one, inching into peoples’ residences by the day. The NEWMAP boss said the gully is about 200m deep. “If you look behind; before now, it wasn’t that deep. As the rain comes early with greater intensity, the depth of the gully is further increasing. We are hoping the moment we can carry out the engineering design of this place and know the implication of the intervention, then of course, the government will swing into action”
