Ifeanyi Uzozie paid his usual, courtesy call to his forty-three year old uncle on a Saturday afternoon at Orlu, Imo state. The uncle was very healthy. Three days later, message came that the uncle was dead after a brief illness of intense cough, vomiting and dysentery. The uncle's wife and two children suffered the same disease symptoms but were saved. They drank untreated water procured from road-side water vendors -  the only source of drinking water for about ninety-eight percent of the estimated 1.5 million people living within the 12 local government areas in the Orlu senatorial district. Illnesses from water-borne diseases have in the last three decades ravaged the people and have evolved as the greatest sources of death here.

At the dawn of Nigeria’s independence and long after the end of Nigeria’s civil war, treated running water derived from bore-holes was available to most of the inhabitants of this district. But with time, the combined factors of progressive decrease in bore-hole water turn-out, urbanisation and increase in human population rendered reliance on water bore-holes obsolete and impracticable here. In many areas of the old Ohaji-Egbema-Oguta local government area, the activities of oil companies have rendered drilling and treatment of water from bore-holes more cumbersome, costlier and unattractive.

The increasing difficulties in the use of water bore-holes for water supply in Orlu district prompted the decision during the early 1980’s by the Imo state government headed by the late Sam Mbakwe to propose the Orlu regional water scheme whose water is to be derived from either the Urashi or Njaba rivers or both. The project when completed was to supply water to nearly all the 12 local government areas within the district. The project was about to take off when the military sacked the 2^nd Republic in 1983.

Thereafter, perhaps, due to the hyperinflation brought about by the structural adjustment programme and the attendant currency devaluation, subsequent governments in Imo state including that led by Achike Udenwa who hails from the zone resorted to pleading with the federal government of Nigeria to take over the execution of the project. Of course, the federal government has been building similar projects in many other areas of the federation. And it must be recalled that on many occasions between 2005 and 2006, numerous media announcements were made by the federal authorities to the effect that the federal government was to commit the sum of 77 million Naira toward the take-off of the Orlu regional water scheme. Nothing was seen on the ground after that. Perhaps, it was one of those media contract awards made without budget appropriations.

Less than a week to the end of President Obasanjo’s presidency in 2007, he paid an official visit to Imo state and the then Imo state governor, Achike Udenwa, made a passionate appeal to the president to engage the federal government to realise the Orlu regional water scheme. It is pertinent to note that this plea was made at Orlu in the presence of the then governor-elect and now governor of Imo state, Ikedi Ohakim.

It is more than one year since the change of leadership at both the federal and state levels of government, and uncertainty seems to have surrounded the provision by government of this most basic necessity of life - water - to its citizens in the Orlu senatorial district.

But a certainty remains: more than twenty-seven years after the Imo state government grasped the necessity for a dependable water supply scheme for the people in Orlu zone, death and illnesses by water-borne diseases have continued to devastate the people here.

Before the fall of the 2^nd Republic, the government of the then Imo state was able to complete similar regional water schemes in Aba, Owerri and Umuahia. It could not finish that for Okigwe which was eventually completed by the federal government.

Rather than buck-passing at the expense of human lives in a zone inhabited by close to half the population of Imo state, the present state government is being asked to grab the bull by the horns. Governor Ikedi Ohakim’s ‘Clean and Green’ package and his much professed love for equity underscore the rationale for a government headed by him to spearhead the actualisation of the Orlu regional water scheme. No person of goodwill in Imo state can stand on the way of the state government toward realising this ‘humanitarian’ project. Above all, the state governor’s ‘Clean and Green’ campaign may readily be brought to scrutiny and can easily be debunked when this huge number of people in the state is left without a reliable source of running water.

If the Imo state government meaningfully embarks on this project soon, two scenarios that may emerge are that within five to ten years it can complete it, and perhaps, ask for reimbursement from the federal government through the federal ministry of water resources; or that before the completion of the project, the federal government delightfully takes over its execution just as it did in Okigwe. Either way, governor Ikedi Ohakim’s ‘Clean and Green’ programme shall be gleefully inserted into Nigeria’s political lexicon.

Chima Ezike

Orlu, Imo state

Robot  # 1 | 11.06.2008 16:16

Ifeanyi Uzozie paid his usual, courtesy call to his forty-three year old uncle on a Saturd...Read the full article.