Flood: Six Persons Drown In Anambra, LG Submerges—Chairman
No fewer than six persons including two women and four have been drowned by flood in Nzam, the headquarters of Anambra West Local Government Area of Anambra.
Mr Felix Ikechi, transition chairman of Anambra confirmed the incident to newsmen in Awka on Wednesday.
Ikechi said the victims were women from two families who attempted with their children to move from the flood overrun location to a higher plane within the community.
He said their husbands refused them to move in the night but the women insisted and embarked on the ill-fated trip with children using a local canoe.
“The women from two families tried to move from their houses when the level of water became threatening to another place with Nzam, but their husbands advised them to wait till morning.
“So, their husbands upon their insistence allowed them to go and stayed back, but because they did not know how to swim, they drowned in the river when their canoe capsized, it was in the morning that they were discovered because help could not come at night,” he said.
Ikechi said all the communities in the Local Government Area had been submerged and that all three displaced persons camps were cited outside the area apart from the one at Iyiora Bridge.
He said others were at Umueri and Onitsha with a combined population of over 3,500.
Felix commended the Anambra government for their rescue efforts which had moved people of Anambra West to safe locations but lamented that a good number of them had refused to heed the call to move.
According to him, almost every victim who is willing to leave the area has been evacuated, the problem we have now are those refused to move because they want to stay back to secure their homesteads and farm inputs.
He called on the Federal government complement the efforts of State government on the area of relief supplies adding that he was with the President’s General of the various communities to ensure that those in camps were getting attention.
