Earthquake looms in Awgu

Unless Nigerian government quickly intervenes, earthquake may, soon, wrack Awgu Local Government Area of Enugu state. Experts say the earthquake, if not nipped in the bud, will be disastrous and may lead to loss of several lives of the people of the area. (Picture right shows the Awgu landslide while on below right is Chief Uche Anioke, executive chairman of the council)

Last year, October 7, over ten kilometers square land in the council had its top soil submerged about 30 meters below earth’s surface. The landslide affected hectares of land used as farm lands by four communities of the council, including Ezere, Ugwueme, Umuhu and Mgbidi respectively. A landslide is a sudden collapse of part of a mountainside or cliff so that it descends in a disintegrating mass of rocks and earth.

Eye witnesses recount that the Awgu slide was preceded by strange sounds as if some earth moving equipment were operating underneath the ground. Some minutes later, there was an explosion-like sound, and the sky got enveloped by thick dusts.

“We moved towards the direction only to discover that our farmlands have been submerged very deep below the earth surface. We thought the incident was an earthquake”, the victims lament.

As it were, landslides are not new in Awgu. A similar slide had occurred in the area in 1968. In that particular natural disaster, a village called Umuagalla was entirely submerged and sunk below the earth’s surface, swallowing up the indigenes that were in their homes at the time!

The cause of the 1968 fatal slide was traced to a narrow flowing stream that meandered into the hills, leading to the collapse of the hills for a fast flowing torrential river that washed away and sank Umuagalla community from the earth surface.

Environmentalists and geophysicists say the latest slide occurred from a massive landslide due to underneath earth movement. The experts warn residents to stay off the affected area, and to, also, be at alert as there is no guarantee that the underneath movement would not continue.

A team of environmental experts, led by Alex Nwaegbu, swiftly drafted to the area by the federal government, confirms the slide, describing it as a massive land slide with a lot of fractures. The slide, the team explains, was an aftermath of long percolation of water under the earth surface that was bridged by the rocks below the soil. And this situation set the earth surface into movement.

Landslides, the team tutors, are bound to occur often in the area because Awgu has a high topography and situates within the 0ver 500 kilometers long topographical hills ridge that stretches from Idah in kogi state down to Arochukwu in Abia state. The team warns the indigenes to stop further building of houses in the area, so as to prevent a more disastrous incident.

Such disastrous slides could take a monstrous dimension capable of snowballing into an earthquake.

This is the more reason Awgu Local Government’s leadership solicits quick intervention of authorities concerned over the latest landslide in the area. Hon Uche Anioke, chairman of the council, laments that the calamity has brought untold hardship to the communities because they (the communities) are predominantly peasant farmers and the affected places were farm lands for cultivation of crops.

Regretting that the situation is beyond his council to handle, Anioke enjoins the federal government to assist to alleviate the sufferings of the farmers who, he says, lost all their economic trees and land to the slide. .