The problem of gully erosion has become a nightmare for many communities in the five states of the South-East geo-political zone. In some of the affected communities, many people have lost their lives while property worth billions of Naira were swept away in others.

From Abia to Imo, Anambra to Enugu and Ebonyi states, gully erosion has left scars that are mind-bugling. Some of the gullies are as deep as a huge ditch left behind by miners. The situation is so bad that some houses within these communities have been submerged by erosion. Some of the communities which have been literally sacked by gully erosion include Nanka in Anambra State, Njaba in Imo State, Uturu in Abia State and Abor in Udi Local Government Area of Enugu State.

Worried by the menace of erosion in the South-East, the governors of the five states in the zone took the case to Aso Rock last Tuesday. During their closed door meeting with Vice- President Goodluck Jonathan, Peter Obi, chairman of the South- East Governors’ Forum painted a grim picture of the ecological disaster. He urged the federal government to address the environmental degradation in the area.

Touched by the plight of the communities which have been devastated by gully erosion in the zone, Jonathan pledged the preparedness of the federal government to declare the South-East an ecological disaster zone. Last Tuesday’s meeting between the South-East governors and the vice-president is a follow-up to an earlier one they held with President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua about two months ago.

Briefing  journalists after last week’s parley with the vice-president, Obi said the Presidency had agreed to set up a special committee to work out the modalities for tackling the problem. He described the problem as monumental and far beyond the financial capabilities of state governments in the South-East. “The entire South-East zone has been steadily and remorselessly ulcerated by landslides and gully erosion. This has created a problem so monumental that it is far beyond the initiative and financial capabilities of the South-East zone to address. Whole communities have been buried in deep gullies, farmlands wiped out and roads truncated.”

Obi said it is a matter of regret that over the years, successive federal administrations had looked the other way while the natural disaster of erosion did incalculable havoc on the South-East. “The same cannot be said of the Northern part of the country where concerted federal efforts are ranged against desert encroachment. Nor can it be said of the South-West where federal authorities are pitted in a continuining battle against the ravages of the Bar Beach in Lagos,” Obi said.

Before last week’s visit to Aso Rock by South-East governors, members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Ecology had visited some of the erosion sites in the South-East to see things for themselves. Grace Bent, chairman of the committee, said her members were uncomfortable with what they saw. She promised that the committee would ensure that there is a quick intervention to remedy the problem.

Already, some leaders of the communities affected by the ecological disaster feel relieved by the promise made by the federal government to intervene. Obianumba Ajaghaku, a community leader in Nnobi, Anambra State, told Newswatch that the federal government’s decision has raised the hope that the problem would soon be tackled. He, however, urged the federal government to implement the declaration without delay.

Boniface Egboka, a professor of geology and acting vice-chancellor of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, warned that unless the federal government took measures to stem the menace of erosion, some parts of the South-East would be wiped out from the map of Nigeria in the next 20 years.

Reported by Dike Onwuamaeze