Delta community decries lack of basic social amenities

Omou-Utchi community is on the threshold of extinction. The rich agricultural community in Anoicha East Local Government Area of Delta State has been cut off from civilisation.

A visit by journalists to the community revealed that it lacks access road and other basic social amenities enjoyed by other parts of the state. For instance, it lacks electricity, borehole, well equipped medical facility, a dilapidating primary school, among others.

It was discovered that the people still live in mud and thatched houses with little or no protection against inclement weather.

Being close to the shores of River Niger, the community suffers constant flooding during rainy seasons.

And their source of water for drinking and domestic use comes from the river, where they perpetually pick up water borne diseases.

The community also lacks a good healthcare centre where they can take the sick to after contracting water borne diseases. The only healthcare centre in the village has been abandoned by successive governments. pre-natal care is alien to pregnant women as no hospital exists there.

The sick and the pregnant, whose case defy traditional medicine or the little medical provision available in the ramshackled healthcare centre can either travel on water as far as Onitsha and Asaba to seek medical care or surrender to fate.

Farm produce perish seasonally for lack of access road that has not attracted the attention of several governments since agitation began in 1976.

Speaking to journalists on the total neglect of the village, the community head, His Highness, Richard Nzekwe, the Ogene of Umouchi, the Okpaluku of Omou-Utchi community, decried successive governments’ insensitivity to his domain.

“We are forced to send our children to other places to go to school at a very tender age. This has made our children to be wayward because they lack parental care where they are because we have to hire houses for them.

“All our children are outside and many of them have joined bad gangs and they never come home with good results to their parents.

“The lack of roads is killing our schools. We have children in this community that can feed three primary schools. But they are all around Onitsha, Kwale, Asaba and other places. “

“Look at the health centre that we have in the community. We build that health centre by ourselves and we called the council people to engage staff there, but they have refused to do anything.

“The people they sent to come and manage the health centre don’t come to work. They are only there to collect salaries.

“We do not know whether the council does give them drugs or not because our people are paying heavily to get drugs. We are an endangered species,” the traditional ruler lamented.

Rev Father Paul Arinze Obi, who’s the Parish Priest of Holy Trinity Catholic Church in the community and was posted there in 2013, said the community was suffering as a result of government deliberate neglect.

“These people here are peasant farmers and are made up indigenes and non-indigenes who have come here to farm.

“But for all their toils, they seem not to be getting anything meaningful from it because there is no road to evacuate their produce. As a missionary here, I feel their pains so much.

“For example, I have to be crossing River Niger on daily basis because there are no roads.

“There is no water to drink and there is not healthcare centre for the people. the education here is almost zero.

“Young men with good future end up doing farming. Even the farming they engaged in is not profitable because there are not roads.

“Some of them end up destroying themselves by joining bad gangs which makes them lack morals. When I see this young people suffering, I really feel pains.

The priest called on the state government to come to the aid of the community to give them a sense of belonging.

One of the women in the community, Mrs. Uju Uba, lamented how pregnant women in the community suffer on daily basis before they give birth to their babies. See Cost in Nigeria.

Most of them, she said, have to travel to far away Onitsha or Asaba to seek medical care, a journey she stressed made some of them to suffer complications.

The respondents called on the government of Governor Ifeanyi Okowa to come provide roads, portable water, market, schools, hospital and electricity.