Abia State Governor, Dr. Alex Otti, OFR, has appealed to the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, to urgently intervene in controlling the erosion menace ravaging parts of the state.
The Governor made the call when he received the Managing Director of the NDDC, Sam Ogbuku and some Directors of the Commission in his office.
Otti said, “In Abia, we have a lot of challenges, the major ones are in a few places like Aba, Umuahia, Isuikwuato and Umunneochi area – erosion.”
He informed the NDDC executives of how erosion in Ovom, a community in Aba, had cut a road into two, creating a massive gully that led to the collapse of buildings in the area,
He said the Abia State government had already given an ultimatum to affected residents of the Ovom erosion site, to evacuate immediately.
Otti begged the NDDC to save Abia State from erosion menace, by assisting the efforts of the state government in dealing with the problem.
He used the occasion to inform the NDDC Managing Director and his team of the litany of abandoned projects in the state, urging the Commission to complete them.
“But there are also a lot of abandoned projects. One of them is very close here and links this place to the Isiala Ngwa North Local Government Headquarters. As of the last time I passed there, my estimate is that it was about 60% completed. Somewhere along the line funding ceased,” the Governor narrated.
He appealed to the NDDC to see to the completion of the projects otherwise all the work that had been done would amount to waste.
Governor Otti who referred the visiting NDDC team to other abandoned projects in Aba, Arochukwu and Umuahia North, said the contractors were being owed.
He, however, acknowledged the interventions by the NDDC in the state while expressing confidence in the capacity of Sam Ogbuku and his team to lead the NDDC to greater accomplishment.
