KWENU: Our Culture, Our Future

Erosion in Nigeria: Calamity in the waiting

Thursday, January 26, 2006

The Igbo people of Southeast of Nigeria need help from the international community to eradicate the dangers arising from severe gully erosion problems and consequent catastrophic landslide. Help is needed now! For far too long, over 30 years, the Igbo people in Nigeria have been treated marginally by the federal government. At least, this is an opinion a vast majority of the Igbo in the Diaspora and Nigeria hold strongly.

Erosion, the ecological catastrophe, whose devastation is being felt in the southeastern part of Nigeria mostly inhabited by the Igbo, who lost the civil war that claimed millions of lives, has not yet sparked the public consciousness, either in Nigeria, where the government feels indifferent about the plight of the Igbo, or in the western world for lack of awareness. The loud cry for help has not yet reached the shores of countries in Asia, Europe, Australia, North America, and South America since the people in power in Nigeria have always seem less obligated to address the needs and care for the welfare of the Igbo people, who are mostly Christians, than to plunder the public treasury.

While the Igbo and the areas they occupy seethe in poverty and devastation, coupled with the degradation of arable land, people in power impishly swim in the river of corrupt wealth. The Igbo people continue to feel the ravaging effects of uncontrolled gully erosion in almost every part of southeast.

Gully erosion has had and will continue to have destructive impacts in and around southeast of Nigeria in the absence of immediate corrective and preventive measures. The government and the world cannot afford to remain silent in the face of ecological calamity that may wipe out millions of people, particularly the Igbo people of Nigeria, who are predominantly Christians.

Cases of displaced numerous villagers in the Southeast of Nigeria due to widespread of erosion problems abound with equally untold human agony. The agony that started with a gradual loss of farming land for economic earnings of the rural inhabitants exacerbated when proud rural dwellers abandoned their homes for life as refugees. The problems of severe erosion in these areas are widespread and it is rapidly obliterating the ecological and economic life of many areas in the Southeast of Nigeria.

As recently as December 30, 2005, the Daily Independent reported the agony and anguish of the victims of ugly erosion. Their hopelessness could be imagined in this: “Indigenes of Umuchi village of Ekwulobia community in Aguata Local Government Area of Anambra State have again raised alarm over the erosion situation in the area, saying the menace had not only decimated their land but has rendered hundreds homeless. They called on the Federal Government to match words with action by putting up urgent measures to combat the menace immediately, so as to avert imminent disaster that could lead to the extermination of the community.” The extermination of the community! Is that what the Nigerian government is waiting for before it could act in a matter as serious as erosion danger?

It was also reported in the same paper how a 73-year old packed his belongings on June 30, 2005 at about 2:00 a.m. with his family of nine and ran for their lives because his home was about to cave in to erosion. According to Daily Independent the fretting man had appealed to the President of Nigeria for help, but to no avail. “Meanwhile, a 73-year old farmer from the disaster-threatened Umuchi village, Pa Stephen Okafor, has appealed to the President Olusegun Obasanjo to save him the agony of ending his life outside a decent home, stating that he is forced to share sleeping spaces with friends and relatives intermittently like a refugee.”

Indeed, a great portion of farming and habitable parcels of land has been lost to erosion. If the problem were not corrected, more parcels of land would be lost with every passing hour.

Stephen Dale wrote on November 17, 2000 in International Development Research Centre (IDCR) reports, “South-eastern Nigeria is a densely-forested region with a kind of a rolling, hilly terrain. But this lush, green land could soon become an arid badland that's [unsuitable] for cultivation, dangerous for human habitation, and well on the way to becoming a parcel of useless land, warns Frank Simpson, a sedimentologist at the University of Windsor.”  And ‘The culprit is a phenomenon called 'gully erosion',” he added.

The precarious situation lends itself perfectly well to a landslide that may potentially wipe out several towns in the Igbo areas. There have been several reports on this ravaging situation in the Southeast, but the Nigerian government has been uncharacteristically mum about it. It, however, leaves one to conclude that the government is not particularly concerned about the welfare of the Igbo and the tribe must continue to suffer the vestiges of the civil war.

Alarmed by the erosion devastation during his recent visit to Nigeria, Dr. Okenwa Nwosu took pictures of the carnage of the erosion menace to share with Nigerians in the Diaspora. Piqued by the environmental disaster, he said, “The conditions, under which our kith and kin have to make their daily living in Nigeria, are hellish and inhuman.”

He continued, “Some residents of those areas freely pleaded with me not to forget their plight after recording the horrible images of their living space. I made a solemn pledge not to forget them and this has, since then, been the driving force in all my endeavors to bring about a tangible change for the better.”

Enquiring about the horrific images he brought back from Nigeria, Dr. Nwosu said, “I decided to pictorially document the deplorable images that one readily encounters throughout Alaigbo [Igboland] and contiguous territories during my travels in Nigeria. I believed that seeing raw images of the circumstances at home close-up would move many to respond and to rise up to arrest the fast-deteriorating condition at home.”

The Igbo people need international help in saving their land from the scourges of erosion. Since Nigeria lacks a national policy and leadership to address the problem, the international community should act now before it is too late. The international community should provide Nigeria with technical and material help to deal with the problem adequately.

Photos by:     Dr. Okenwa Nwosu