Zhigbodo: Abuja village where people drink from ponds

Zhigbodo community in Tunga-Maje ward of Gwagwalada Area Council, Federal Capital Territory (FCT), is populated by a sizable number of Gbagyi.

The community, which is about 100km away from Gwagwalada town, shares a boundary with Suleja in Niger State.

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The inhabitants, who are mainly peasant farmers, lack access to pipe-borne water.

To access Zhigbodo community, one has to travel through Old-Abattoir in Suleja, from where one then takes a narrow path that links to the community.

Speaking when Aso Chronicle visited the village on Saturday, an elder of the community, Zaphaniyah Zakari, said lack of potable water has been the major challenge facing the villagers.

He said the people’s only source of water is from ponds which, he said, the elders and some youths mobilised and dug to provide them water for use.

He said a borehole provided by a former councilor that represented Tunga-Maje had since broken down.

According to him, the people’s only means of getting water now is by digging ponds in FADAMA farms.

“After fetching the water from the pond back home, our women have to put alum for some hours before we can drink it,” he said.

Also speaking, the Mai Anguwa of Zhigbodo community, Zakari Saidu, said people of the community have been subjected to hardship due to the lack of hygienic drinking water in the community.

He said the community dig several ponds and wait for several hours before they get water for domestic use, even as he said, cattle also struggle with the women to get water.

“You can see it for yourself. This is the kind of water we have been drinking,’’ he said showing our reporter some of the ponds dug by the community, adding that cows drink at the ponds.

He said the community has written severally through the councillor representing Tungan-Maje ward, Salihu Adamu, but nothing has been done by the authorities.

He said the perennial water problem in the community has forced some of the people to relocate to neighbouring villages in Niger State.

The mai anguwa also lamented the lack of healthcare facilities in the community, saying when any of his subjects falls ill they have to travel to Suleja in Niger State for medical attention.

He appealed to the authorities of the council to come to the aid of his people by providing boreholes and health centres in the community.

But the councillor representing Tungan-Maje ward, Salihu Adamu, said he had not received any complaint about the water problem from the people of the community, adding that he will reach out to the community leader to get him to write to the council through him.

“I will ask the community leader to write so that I forward their complaint to the council authorities for appropriate action,” he said.

Reacting, the chairman of the council, Alhaji Adamu Mustapha, said he would mobilise officials of the Works Department of the council to visit the village and assess the situation for necessary action.

“Though we have not received a complaint from the community about water problem, we will go there just as we did in Ibwa community, where the villagers wrote that they had problem of access road and we quickly intervened,” he said.