The people of Enugwu-Nanka Village in Orumba North Local Government Area have cried out to the Federal and State Governments, as well as the World Bank and environmental agencies, to save the area from the devastating effects of gully erosion ravaging the community.

Conducting the ABS crew around the affected sites, the Chairman of the Enugwu-Nanka Erosion and Flood Control Committee, Chief Emmanuel Osele, said the gully erosion has displaced over two hundred families who were forced to relocate to other areas, while many houses worth billions of naira have caved into the gullies, rendering several households homeless, with other buildings on the verge of collapse if urgent action is not taken.

Chief Osele added that farmlands, access roads linking the village with neighbouring Amakor and Ubahu villages, and other critical infrastructure in the area have been swallowed by the gully, explaining that the village and individuals have sustained various interventions, including tree planting, construction of drainages, and catchment pits to control the devastation, while warning against the cutting of trees in erosion-prone areas.

Also speaking to ABS, an octogenarian whose house is threatened by the erosion, Nze Joshua Obinwa, said the gully erosion has existed since his birth eighty-six years ago and has displaced many elderly people from their ancestral homes, appealing for immediate intervention to check the menace.

In their separate contributions, some members of the village, including Mr. Alexander Nwafete, Pastor Cyril Onyejeme, and the Vice Chairman of Ubahu Village, Nze James Ezeilo, regretted that over one thousand plots of land have already been lost to the erosion, with overall socioeconomic development severely affected, and noted that new erosion sites are developing within the Uhuabor axis near the boundary between Enugwu-Nanka and Ubahu villages as runoff from neighbouring communities continues to empty into the area.