About eight persons including a pregnant woman and seven children are
feared dead as they reportedly drowned in the River Niger following the
rise in the level of water due to incessant rainfall and opening of the
Lagdo Dam in Cameroun.
The victims, who were said to be missing since the current flood
ravaging parts of Delta State started, were said to be natives of Utchi, a
community along the bank of the Niger in Ndokwa East Local
Government Area of the state.
The children were said to be returning from school while the pregnant
woman was returning from Anambra State when they were caught by a
storm, which threw them into the river where they reportedly drowned.
Chairman of the Ndokwa East council area, Mrs. Nkechi Chukwurah, said
corpses of the victims were yet to be found.
Speaking in Asaba yesterday on the sidelines of a stakeholders' meeting
on the ravaging flood, Chukwurah lamented the impact of the flood in the
locality, adding that two persons have also died.
She told newsmen that despite initial hesitation from residents in flood-
prone communities to move to the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)
camp at Ashaka, about 170 persons have reported at the camp as the
water level keeps rising.
"As at this morning, we have recorded about 170 persons at the camp.
They said the water stood still at the Niger and was now flowing into the
communities thereby raising the volume in the communities, and I think
that is the reason they are coming out on their own.
"They are calling us to come back and pick them but we do not have the
resources to do that because we actually wasted money initially to move
around urging them to come out without much success," she said.
Earlier, at the stakeholders' meeting, the Deputy Governor, Kingsley
Otuaro, who doubles as the state chairman of the flood management
committee, said a lot had been done to cushion the effect of the flood on
victims.
One of the monarchs who spoke during the meeting, Emmanuel Delekpe,
traditional ruler of Udu Kingdom, lamented failure of the Federal
Government to build buffer dams to take the excess water from the
Camerounian dam.
