News Investigators/ No fewer than 4,000 residents, including petty traders, sand miners and other business owners around the River Niger area in the commercial city of Onitsha in Anambra State have been left without shelter and shops where to lay their heads or do their businesses, as the state government has demolished their houses and shops.
The residents, with their family members, who spoke to South-East PUNCH on Tuesday and Wednesday, lamented that they were “brutally” thrown out from their places of abode and business without any prior notice and without allowing them to take out any of their belongings.
Although, the state government, through the Chairman of Onitsha South Local Government Area, Emeka Orji, who supervised the demolition on Monday, justified its action by insisting that the demolition follows the state government’s resolve to rid the area of “illegal structures” and incessant building collapse in the area, the victims claimed that they had lived and done businesses in their property, which they claimed they legally acquired through the National Inland Waterways Authority, even long before the emergence of successive administrations in the state.
The demolition of no fewer than 2,000 shops and residential buildings was a fall out of the building collapse that occurred on Basden Street, Fegge, Onitsha, on Sunday, and a three-storey building, which had earlier collapsed at the Odu-Igbo area in Ochanja in the same Onitsha, three weeks ago.
In the collapsed building, no fewer than six persons were killed and over 20 persons sustained varying degrees of injuries after they were rescued from the rubbles.
The demolished shops and residential buildings located by the bank of River Niger were mostly owned by members of Sand Miners Association of Anambra State, who use them as equipment and operational offices, while some are occupied by petty traders who service them. Some people also own residential properties there.
When South-East PUNCH correspondent visited the area on Tuesday, it was like a ghost town, as the whole area has been levelled, while some of the victims were seen trying to salvage the remainder of their various items.
It was further gathered that the structures were built by the affected victims, who allegedly got the approval of the National Inland Water Ways.
But the state governor, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, during a visit to the area last week, had stated that NIWA does not have the right to build or allocate spaces to traders on Anambra land.
Soludo, during the inspection of roads constructed by his administration, ordered the chairman of Onitsha South Local Government chairman, Chief Orji, to demolish all “illegal structures,” insisting that the land belongs to Anambra State and not NIWA.
He said, “The code or bye-laws establishing NIWA gave the organisation 100 metres from the banks of the River Niger as right of easement, but what we are seeing here are illegal structures and should be demolished.”
One of numerous victims, whose property was demolished, identified as Mrs Ifeoma Nwafor, a farmer, said her two shops, which she uses as storage for seedlings and farm implements, were demolished, with various seedlings and items worth over N5 million, farm equipment and other agricultural items destroyed without notice.
Speaking with South-East PUNCH, Mrs Nwafor, an Onitsha indigene, described the demolition as “horrible and man’s inhumanity to man,” lamenting how a state government claiming to promote agriculture would destroy agricultural produce.
She said, “The demolition also encroached on some of our farmlands. My seedlings and other agricultural produces kept inside the shops, awaiting the next planting season, were totally destroyed without anything to salvage. Punch
