Posted by By Geoffrey Anyanwu, Awka on
There are growing fears about the safety of the mother of the four brothers aged between 6 and 12, who were last week Wednesdaty swept away by flood in Nanka community of Anambra State.
There are growing fears about the safety of the mother of the four brothers aged between 6 and 12, who were last week Wednesdaty swept away by flood in Nanka community of Anambra State.
The distraught woman has not seen since a day after the ugly incident when in one fell swoop, she lost the four boys, her only kids to flood, which perenially ravages the community, prompting fears that she may have committed suicide.
The husband, who has since relocated to his younger brother's residence, is a pitiable sight.
When Sunday Sun visited, Ezeokeke, sitting on an iron chair, was bent over with his right hand covering his face . He was oblivious of approaching sympathisers.
The greeting of this writer and those with him jolted him and he managed to exchange greetings.
Lamenting his fate amid tears, he said: "My children, Emeka, Sunday, Iwuchukwu and Izuchukwu went as usual to fetch water and it was there that the flood carried them. This erosion had been disturbing us so much here and that is the cause of all these things.
What can I say? I don't know what is happening. I have been here since that day doing nothing and waiting with the hope that they will return. They are my only children, what am I to do now?," he querid just as he finally burst into tears.
Ezeokeke, a lorry driver, is mourning not only his kids but his wife, Joanna as well. A day after the flood swept away their little bundles of joy, Joanna had disappeared and is yet to be found.
Confounded and in utter shock, Ezeokeke said of his wife: "I can't explain her whereabout. Whether she is alive or dead, I don't know. I don't know, I can't explain. In fact, this head is scattering, I am finished."
Like Ezeokeke, residents of the community are also confused about the disappearance of Joanna, who according to the husband is in her later 50s. Some of the residents, who despite hoping that she would be found alive, still have the sneaky feeling that she must have either committed suicide or ran amok.
The 75-year-old Ezeokeke told Sunday Sun that a week before the demise of his kids, erosion had sacked him from his house.
His words: "You see, we ran out of our home to my brother's house as the same erosion swallowed my house just last week. And I didn't know that this will be like this, what will I say? I want government to come to my assistance, am now a refugee with practically nothing, not even my wife".
The traditional ruler of Nanka, Igwe Gilbert Ofomata is indeed one person that is so disturbed about the menace of the erosion in the community as he uses the slightest opportunity to shout and cry for help.
So, following a visit to the community by the State Commissioner for Environment and
Mineral Resources, Dr. Ifedi Okwenna in the wake of the disaster, the monarch called on government and the international community to rescue his community from the menace of erosion.
"In 1920s, there was a place during the colonial era where the white men settled at Nkwo-Agu. When the erosion started, they planted cashew and other trees in the area in order to check the erosion. They also thought us how to dig catchment pits.
"Up the hill was a place we had a land slide in the 1980s which took a lot of lives. Recently, four children were swept away by the flood. Today, we do not have land in the area and we do not have economic trees any longer. We are living next door to death and we do not know when it will happen," he stated.