Obogoro community has come to be the poster child for erosion in Bayelsa State, headlining national dailies as the community brought to its knees by erosion for more than a decade. Yet, no serious interventions have been taken to remedy the situation, not even the Obogoro shoreline protection project, which kicked off in 2021.
Two years ago, Governor Douye Diri awarded a canalisation and shoreline protection project in Obogoro to Nigergreen Dredging International Limited, an indigenous dredging company.
On Saturday, FIJ visited the community, and the only sign of Nigergreen activity was a dredger stationed across the Ikoli River from the community.
A dredger deposited in Obogoro community by the Nigergreen Dredging International Limited company
Community members said the dredging company was last seen three weeks earlier. But they left after workers protested the non-payment of wages.
“They said the company owes them for eight months, and we don’t know the reason. They are casual workers. There is no need for the company to pay them that kind of money. But they’ve stopped the work. We are begging the government to please use their influence to start this work and save my house for me,” Thursday Ogoni Anyamalem, an indigene of the community, told FIJ.
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LIVING ON BORROWED TIME
Anyamalem, 63, has lived in Obogoro all his life and has watched his community change for worse over the past decade. One by one, the Ikoli River claimed the homes of his kinsmen, taking lives with it sometimes.
A few years ago, it was ten blocks of self-contained apartments that belonged to his in-law, then two women who died of hypertension a year ago, and three months ago, after losing their homes to erosion.
This year, the Ikoli River has set its bank at his doorstep, his home, its next target, but Anyamalem cannot leave. He has nowhere else to go.
“Let the government make haste so that my house can be saved,” he said.
“This is my home. I have nowhere to go. If erosion comes and takes it away, where will I stay? I don’t know. Where would I pack to? I have a big family.”
Anyamalem lives in a six-bedroom block house in Obogoro with two wives and 13 children. Since 2012, they have prayed to the government to come to their aid, but to no consequence. In 2020, floods in the community took his grandson and, in the following year, his cassava farmland. The 2022 flood forced its way into his home, and for months, until the floods receded, Anyamalem and his family lived in his swamped home on stacked layers of blocks.
A photo of Thursday Ogoni Anyamalem outside his house
A photo of Anyamalem’s kitchen sitting on the bank of the river
If erosion strikes again, as Anyamalem believes, his home will not withstand the river’s assault.
OBOGORO SHORELINE PROJECT: STATUS: ONGOING
For more than two years, the Bayelsa State government has insisted that the Obogoro erosion project is ongoing, even downplaying the plight of the community when they dare protest about their living conditions.
“Obogoro community cannot say they have been neglected by the government,” Douye Diri, the state governor, said in March.
A month later, in April, when he addressed pressmen about a planned protest in the community, he said, “When we heard stories of protest, I asked, where are my brothers in that community? If there is one community that has benefited from this state and this administration, it is Obogoro.”
The benefits implied by the governor were the construction of a community primary school, a newly-built road, and the appointment of some community members to high-ranking positions in the state.
They, however, do not solve the primary challenge plaguing the community. While these projects have improved the lives of the people, they have joined the list of community projects at risk of raging erosion.
Less than ten years ago, Obogoro was home to St. John Primary School, a large football pitch, a town hall, a lodge for corps members, a bus stop, and a bill gate water project. Now, they only exist as sediments in the middle of the Ikoli River and memories of its indigenes.
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LANDLORD, NO TENANTS
Somkien Maclean Kpekpere, a native of Obogoro community, lost his home, a block of six rooms and a hall to erosion.
“Look at what is left. Only this is left,” he told FIJ, pointing to a fractured building at the bank of the river.
Erosion not only threatens their homes and properties but has also threatened their livelihoods and impeded their development. Kpekpere’s rental property has been unoccupied for years because no one would rent a home in a sinking town. “People are packing out of Obogoro. Nobody wants to come and invest,” he lamented.
Many elderly indigenes have lost properties to the Ikoli River. The majority of them, now retired and displaced, have no way of rebuilding their lives.
“I believe that when it comes to projects like this, the government should act immediately,” Kpekpere said.
“For the past three years, we’ve been crying, and the government is playing politics with our cry. We’ve been hearing we’ve awarded this, we’ve awarded that. Just recently, we heard that the governor said he had spent N750 million. And when you look at what N750 million has done, it’s like a mirage. Like they are telling us what we are not seeing.”
A photo of Kpekpere’s house
Kpekpere maintained that government efforts have been ineffectual.
“The government has been handling several projects, and the ones that they really want to do, you’ll see them; you’ll see greater efforts. The governor will even go to the site,” he said.
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Ada Gwegwe, the convener of the Save Obogoro Community from Erosion Group (SOCEG), a community-grown erosion prevention activism group, said, “There should be nothing like Save Obogoro Community from Erosion Group by now if the government had kept their promises.”
“We’ve done all we could in terms of campaigning, and till today the situation remains the same,” he said, adding that it was their agitations that brought the attention of the state government to their suffering, giving rise to the canalisatiom project two years earlier.
SOCEG was formed in 2021 to raise awareness and urgency about the erosion in Obogoro. Its core demands are for the federal and state governments and other relevant agencies to address the erosion that has decimated their community for more than a decade.
Protest led by Ada Gwegwe, the convener of SOCEG
POST N750 MILLION EXPENDITURE ON SHORELINE PROTECTION PROJECT, NO PROGRESS
Since the Obogoro shoreline protection project was awarded to Nigergreen Dredging International Limited, community members have not witnessed any significant changes.
In March, the state government announced that they had spent over N750 million in the first phase of the project: site clearing and dredging. That area has since been abandoned and left to overgrow.
The cleared and dredged part of the Ikoli river
Residents said the project was halted during the 2022 flood and the contractors only returned to the site “three weeks ago”.
Work came to a halt shortly after their return. Some of their workers claimed that they were owed payment by the company and disrupted operations.
Members of the community have asked the state government and other stakeholders to step in and intervene.
“We see it as sabotage,” Gwegwe told FIJ, adding that the impact of the 2022 flood was devastating to the community and could have been averted if the shoreline protection project was executed.
Photo of an electric pole being dug out in Obogoro community to save it from impending erosion
FIJ contacted Francis Chukwubuikem, the Nigergreen contractor in charge of the shoreline protection project, to inquire about the project and why work was halted in the community. Chukwubuikem denied knowledge of the situation and refused to speak about his involvement with the company or the community.
“What you are saying is not in existence,” he said, accusing FIJ of being sponsored to blackmail the government and peddle falsehood.
On Tuesday, in contrast to community members’ reports, Gbaranbiri Iselema, the Bayelsa State Commissioner for Environment, told FIJ that work was underway as he spoke.
“As I am speaking to you right now, the work is going on. I was with the contractor yesterday, and work is going on. It is natural that every company will have issues within. I’m not ruling out the fact that there were issues. But as I am speaking to you, the work is going on,” he said.
The post Nowhere to Go! Deadly River Targets Poor Man’s House in Bayelsa Community — But He Cannot Leave appeared first on Foundation For Investigative Journalism.