At least 23 persons, including nursing mothers and children have been reportedly killed and hundreds of others displaced from their abodes in the Ibori, Ugbalo, Ewu-Eguare, Idogalo and Oludide communities of Edo Central, Edo State by gully erosion. Recounting their ordeals on Friday, some of
the community leaders viz. Daudu of Oludide
Village; head of Ibori, Alhaji Gaz; Asene Iyere
and Mallam Mutaro Ibramai of Ewu, said over
eight people had so far been washed away by
the gully erosion that has taken over the place. Reacting to the incident, Edo State
Commissioner for Environment, Mr. Clem Agba,
said the government was not oblivious of
about 110 active gully erosion sites in the
state. He said, “We have taken inventory of all of
these sites. Oshiobugie gully site is the biggest
we have in the state. It used to be seven
fingers, but with a recent survey of the area,
we discovered that new fingers are beginning
to develop and that is why we decided to go and see where these fingers came from. We
are doing a number of resettlement studies to
settle all those who live around these areas. “Mr. President had approved the Nigeria
Erosion Watershed Management Programme,
which is for five eastern states such as Cross-
River and Edo State. It’s going to be World-
Bank funded. The board of directors of the
World Bank approved $650m facility, but the issue is that there is an imbroglio between the
presidency and the national assembly. “They
have not been able to approve the national
borrowing plan and until that plan is
approved, none of the seven states can
access the fund to begin to deal with the problem of erosion. Hopefully, if the national
borrowing plan is approved, we should be
able to get about $75 to $100m to begin to
address the gully erosion problem. “It is
clearly beyond the capability of the state
government. I mentioned that the design has been done; we had a study done by Sirajn
Consultant and paid for by Setraco Nigeria
Limited. The study showed that we need
about N40bn to deal with the gully erosion,
but when we looked at the report, a
substantial part of the gully erosion was not taken care of,” he submitted.
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