By Samuel Oyadongha, YenagoaFour years ago, Ayi, a resident of Obogoro, a riverside community on the fringe of Yenagoa Local Government Area, Bayelsa State, gathered her six children around her and told them they would have to leave. Not because of conflict, not because of family strife but because the river was coming for their home.
“The Ekole River was more than sixteen plots from our house when we moved in, she recalled. “Now that same house is on the verge of being swallowed.” Today, Ayi is a tenant in a neighbouring community, paying rent she can barely afford while her own family home, built with years of sacrifice, teeters on the edge of destruction. She is not alone.
A Community Under Siege
For years, Obogoro has been a thriving riverside settlement where fishing, farming, and trade sustained families. Civil servants, traders, farmers and strangers lived side by side, their lives intertwined with the ebb and flow of the Ekole River that gave them sustenance. But the river that once gave life is now taking it away. A large portion of the community land has been washed away in the last few years.
Coastal erosion has transformed the once vibrant community into a landscape of fear. Homes that stood for decades have crumbled into the water. Farmlands that fed families now lie submerged. Even the community’s Corpers’ Lodge, a symbol of progress and connection to the wider world has been lost to the relentless advance of the wave.The government relocated the community school to safer ground, but for many residents, the damage has already cut too deep.“It’s horrifying staying in my house given the erosion menace,” said Madam Eunice, who fled her home after a terrifying night that will forever haunt her memory.“There was a night when we heard a frightening noise,” she recalled. “When we summoned courage to come out, we discovered that the river had claimed a large portion of land. That was when we realised the risk of staying back.”For four years now, Eunice has been paying “high rent as a tenant” in Yenagoa’s Amarata suburb, even as her own comfortable home stands empty, condemned by the advancing waters.“I have a comfortable home that I was forced to move out of by menacing erosion,” she said, the frustration evident in her voice.
