By Ochuko Akuopha

ONYA—FOR generations, the people of Onya community in Ndokwa East Local Government Area, Delta State, found their identity in the embrace of the River Niger. It was their highway, their treasure and their ancestral anchor.

Today, that embrace has become a stranglehold. The mighty river has turned executioner, swallowing not just earth, but the very soul of the people claiming ten metres of land a year, along with the homes, schools, and sacred tombs that defined them. This is not a tale of water; it is a story of a community watching its own history drowned.

“Either we go extinct, or we rebuild every five years. It is simply not tenable,” Engr. Ike Onyenokwe, told NDV. As President General of the Ndoshimili Development Union, he has watched helplessly as his beloved community, a historic jewel at the apex of the Niger Delta literally disappears before his eyes.

A lingering pain

What began as a gradual environmental nuisance over twenty years ago has exploded into a full-scale ecological nightmare.  The science is simple but devastating: Onya sits on relatively high ground, creating steep riverbanks vulnerable to collapse.

During annual floods, rising waters weaken the base. As the flood recedes, massive sections of land break away and surrender to the river’s insatiable hunger.

“It is a horrible situation. Even my grandmother’s house, half of it has already fallen into the water,” Mr. Owola Ndozi, the community chairman, admitted

Nothing Is Sacred

The erosion shows no respect for anything sacred as family compounds that housed generations now exist only in memory. The primary school has been rebuilt multiple times as the land beneath it kept vanishing. Shrines that anchored spiritual life for centuries are gone. Burial grounds containing the remains of ancestors have been swallowed, forcing families to exhume and relocate their dead.

“For a long time, we have faced this burden,” Ndozi continued. “It is like we are not even in Nigeria.”

Oil barges speed up tragedy

Mother Nature’s assault is bad enough. But for the past eight to ten years, man-made forces have accelerated the destruction at breakneck speed, NDV learned.

Oil barges transporting crude from Okrigbome, Aboh, and Okpai areas roar past the shoreline at high velocity, creating powerful waves that undercut the riverbank like a saw through wood.

“Sometimes as many as twenty barges pass through in a single day,” Onyenokwe said bitterly. “They travel very close to our shoreline at high speed.”

But here’s the sad twist: when locals try to confront the barge operators or raise concerns directly, they are met with armed security personnel guarding the vessels. The people of Onya can’t even plead their case to the very companies accelerating their destruction.

Despite repeated complaints, letters, and personal visits to oil companies, nothing has been done, but Silence.

The price of isolation

Residents now pay an exorbitant N15,000 to N20,000 just to reach a motorable road and travel to Asaba-Ase. The community has been effectively severed from the rest of Delta State.  “We have no water, no light and the erosion is cutting us off from everything,” Ndozi lamented.

“We contribute to Nigeria’s oil and gas industry,” Onyenokwe noted. “Yet we are thoroughly and completely neglected.”

The clock is ticking

For Janet Omuta, the woman leader of Onya, she said:.  “Several houses have been destroyed,” she told NDV. “The government must come to our aid now before we go into extinction.”

An urgent SOS

“What the community needs is professionally engineered shore protection, a multi-billion-naira project far beyond any individual or community’s capacity. Similar projects have already been successfully implemented in Bayelsa, Rivers, and other parts of the Niger Delta.

“This is not a problem our community can solve on its own,” Onyenokwe declared. “We need the Federal Government, Delta State government, DESOPADEC, NDDC, NEMA, oil companies and every relevant stakeholder to treat this as the emergency it is.”

With water lapping at their doorstep and land disappearing by the metre, the people of Onya are fighting a war against time itself.

“Our appeal is simple. Hear our cry. Act now. Save Onya before this historic community is lost forever,” Onyenokwe said.  Because at this rate, his own family home may not survive another two years.  And if nothing changes, neither will Onya.