Erosion has degraded some large swathes of the Anambra landscape to the extent of threatening to gobble up the ancestral home of a former Vice President of Nigeria, the late Dr Alex Ekwueme.
Over 1000 erosion sites exist across local governments in Anambra State, destroying over 7,000 houses in the past five decades.
The traditional ruler of Oko Kingdom, Prof. Lazarus Ekwueme, the younger brother to the late vice president said, “This is our ancestral home. The home of our forefathers and the cradle of our existence. But about 30 metres to these buildings is the gully erosion that has been ravaging Agulu-Nanka and Okoh, my hometown.”
“Be it known to all and sundry that it should not appear as a moonlight tale if tomorrow you hear that the Ekwueme family homestead is no more or that we now live down this massive gully erosion.”
Daily Trust learned that tourists come from other places to see the wonders of nature as erosion has continued to ravage the state.
An environmentalist, Engr. Ikenna Ellis Ezenekwe, said the most affected area is Nanka village in Orumba North Local Government Area. He said he had taken time to go round the Nanka gullies to the point of going down to the foot of the gorges.
According to him, Nanka erosion has become a tourist destination with scores of visitors coming to see how nature has been unkind to the people.
An elder, Ebenesi Okebunoye, said gully erosion has rendered many indigenes landless, with the natural disaster gobbling up buildings.
He said the villagers wait upon God every day, praying for intervention.
He said the history of the gully erosion started as a little flood channel and has developed to gorges, threatening the lives of people and their livelihoods.
“I cannot say how old the erosion is but I can tell you that I was born and I saw the gully as a flood channel. We used to play inside there as little children and gradually it started expanding and deepening.
“The flood comes from Nanka and had already eroded parts of Nanka village in Orumba North Local Government Area, passing through Igbo-Ukwu in Aguata Local Government Area. It also has a connection with the gully erosion in Nimo town; Njikoka Local Government Area, after flowing through our little Obi-Aja stream to Idemili River.
“We are living on the fringe of the gully erosion and several intervention projects have been executed in the past but nothing tangible has been achieved,” he said.
Damian Okeke Ogene, a community leader in Etti village explained that, “The colonial masters that inhabited the communities discovered the danger and planted cashew trees and whistling pines to hold the sand from being washed away by flood.”
“But during the civil war, the soldiers had to uproot the trees while digging trenches and bunkers. After the war, there was no effort to replant the trees and successive rainy seasons took the community by storm which led to the deep gullies with over 7,000 buildings destroyed in the last 49 years and still counting.”
According to the state government, Anambra State has over 1000 sites ravaging various communities.
Agulu and Nanka communities share similar landscapes and topography and from the Agulu end of the erosion gorge which runs through the two communities, a visitor can clearly see the notorious Nanka gully erosion which is adjudged to be the largest in the South East.
The erosion is a serious threat to buildings and human beings as well as economic trees. Within the areas the environmental disaster has occurred, many buildings have collapsed into the valley while roads and other facilities are endangered as the gully is fast destroying and encroaching on facilities.
Our correspondent observed that some of the gullies are so deep that one can hardly fathom the depth and any living thing which falls inside is considered unreachable and thus cannot be rescued.
The Commissioner for Environment, Mr Felix Odumegwu, told Daily Trust that Anambra State is in a critical situation as a result of the damage caused to individuals, communities and the government by erosion.
He described the state as the erosion capital of the world with over 1000 sites, noting that about 146 communities are currently at the mercy of erosion menace.
He noted that the state’s topography is one of the reasons for the increasing degradation of the land while rainfall has been identified as part of the major cause of erosion in the state.
He also stated that the state government has made pleas to the federal government to increase its ecological fund to enable it to fight the ravaging gully erosion.
“We want the federal government to increase the state’s ecological fund and also to classify Anambra State as a seriously erosion endangered state.
“Last time staff from the office of the Secretary to Government of Federation, Ecological Project Office (EPO), visited the state to assess the damage done by erosion we had hoped the visit would yield better results,” he said.
He also hinted that the state government would soon introduce a law mandating residents to harvest their rainwater as part of efforts to prevent runoff water from washing away the earth’s surface which when it happens repeatedly causes erosion.
According to him, the law will mandate people to build a catchment to drain rainwater from their houses, instead of allowing it to find its way and flood communities.
The commissioner also hinted that the state government has drafted a law to stop all illegal mining in the state which is also contributing to the destruction of the land and the subsequent erosion.
He also stated that the government has drafted a law to mandate every family in the state to plant at least one to four trees every year and to have green areas in their neighbourhoods as part of efforts to mitigate the devastating impacts of climate change, which had exacerbated the erosion menace in the state.
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