…Villagers blame government, construction coy
From Geoffrey Anyanwu, Awka
It has been tales of woes for natives of Ubaha Ezira community in Orumba South Local Government Area of Anambra State as the majority of them have been rendered homeless by flood.
The sad development, which started from the first rain in the year has put the food producing community in disarray as many displaced were still in shock over what happened.
Ezira is an agro-based community known for cultivation of rice, cassava, yam, okro, vegetables and palm oil production.
Narrating his ordeal, a 78-year-old victim, Emmanuel Onyeleme, said he has not seen such flood in their community before.
“Those of us living along Ezira Umuomaku, Enugu-Umuonyia road, had a close shave with death and had to be evacuated from our homes when flood from the first heavy rain of the year burst through our walls, swallowing up all our property. It was good Samaritans that organized youths of Ezira and environ who came to work in our various houses all night and way into the morning, evacuating young people, the sick and aged to the houses of our kinsmen that were not affected to pass the night. “We now live like refugees in our own hometown. Government should take responsibility for this because they contracted a firm that did a shoddy job that led to this catastrophe. They should construct a proper gutter along this road so that subsequent rains would not submerge us completely. And they should pay me for these damage,” he said.
Another victim, Ozoemena Ikwukeme said the incident started on the faithful day around 5p.m, when a downpour began and resorted in a flood, which pulled down the walls of his house and destroyed his property, including his documents and those of his wife and kids.
Ikwukeme, a civil servant with the local government rice farmer, is yet to get the full details of his loss, but said more than 30 bags of rice he recently harvested, documents, as well as those of his family members were lost to the flood.
“I blame the contractors the state government engaged to build the Ezira, Umuomaku, Achina road for this misfortune. If this contract is real and not a political fraud, the contractors should have completed a standard drainage system along the road to channel the flood away.
“They (construction company) first blocked the gutters we constructed locally as a community and have been negligent in their job, they are building shallow drainages and that is the reason the flood from the first rain could not be contained living our community desolate and we the natives homeless,” he said in tears.
An Ubaha Ezira native, Emma Nwakuba, whose block walls were pulled down by the flood, said that the situation was quite frustrating as he called for urgent government action.
Nwakuba who disclosed that the flood destroyed the Lister generator, electronic gadgets, borehole and other valuables in the house he was looking after for Chief Cajethan Iloka said: “I want to ask the governor whether he gave this road to be truly built or as a political strategy. All these Arabs did was drive around for six months now without doing any meaningful work on the road. We have a lot of strong youths who are idle and can be employed to build the gutters. But they won’t. It is quite frustrating and we are suffering as a result now.”
President General of Ezira Improvement Union, Chief Edison Umeh, confirmed that many homes were devastated by the flood even as he promised to talk to the government to speed up the work as more rains might pull down more houses.
Chairman of Ubaha village, Jude Umunnakwe, described the incident as unfortunate, noting that it was the first of its kind.
He said he had spearheaded the building of a drainage system, which controlled flood before the contractors blocked it without providing an alternative.
“It is unfair that the contractors could not complete up to half a kilometer of drainage system. I appeal to the state government to hasten the contractors if they truly want to do this job or quit so the community can return to where it was before the so-called construction began,” he said.
The village chairman, however, appreciated Mr. Godwin Ezeemo for his intervention.
Ezeemo, a philanthropist and governorship aspirant of the Peoples’ Progressive Alliance (PPA) in the forthcoming Anambra State governorship election, had visited the community to sympathise with the victims and commended the villagers for coming out en masse to aid one another in evacuation, retrieval and relocation processes.
Ezeemo called on the Anambra State government to hearken to the cry of the homeless Ezira natives that were evacuated from their homes as a result of the flood.
He also advised the contractors to increase the specification of the drainage as the incidence had shown that a larger capacity alone could handle the flood in the area.
An official of Arab Contractors who pleaded anonymity disclosed that the company was working according to specification, saying, “our company is building the drainages according to the specifications given to us by the Anambra State Ministry of Works.”