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Nigeria: Four Die in Imo Erosion Disaster
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Vanguard (Lagos)
3 July 2008
Posted to the web 3 July 2008
Chidi Nkwopara
Owerri
Four people, including three children and an adult, have been confirmed dead, while property, cash crops and economic trees conservatively valued at over N2.6 billion have been washed away by erosion at Urualla, Ideato local government area of Imo State.The President General (PG), Urualla Progressive Union (UPU), Chief Hyginus Ekwueme Onwuneme, who confirmed the ugly incident to Vanguard, also raised alarm that more ancestral homes have been threatened since the current rainy season.
"Three children and an adult have been confirmed dead since the erosion started devastating the town. The community is presently threatened by gully erosion from different sectors", Chief Onwuneme lamented.
While noting with grief that "several ancestral homes have been swallowed by the erosion", Chief Onwuneme also lamented that many families have abandoned their homes and taken refuge in distant places.
Some of the families already sacked by the erosion include those of Pius Uzoechi and Innocent Egemka, both of Umuomeji, Umuturu, as well as Bede Nwaopigbo and Okwute Omechuruagu of Ozuome, Ugwunani, all in Urualla.
"The torrential rain of the past four days has not only worsened the situation but has further increased the threat to life and property of the people. More farmlands, crops and economic trees have caved in and more would go before the rains subside", Onwuneme lamented.
It was his considered opinion that more than 35,000 natives have fled from their ancestral homes, while those living outside the town no longer fancy coming back home for fear of the environmental disaster.
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Answering a question, the PG-UPU affirmed that their kith and kin in Umuogu and Eluama in the Northern fringes of the town, have been cut off by the ravaging erosion, adding that more damage would be done if nothing was done immediately to check landslide.
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