By Chidi Nkwopara, Owerri

SAND excavation has become a huge economic enterprise in parts of Imo State. People who engage in it smile to their respective banks on a daily basis, while lovers of clean and habitable environment grieve on account of the environmental degradation caused by the excavators. Sand excavators in Owerri started their illegal and harmful operation in Otamiri and Nworie, the two rivers that run through Owerri municipality. This was decades ago! Their target at the time was the white sand in the rivers which is in high demand by builders.

A heavily eroded area created by sand excavators in Nekede

With time, sand excavators started attacking the banks of the rivers as they sourced for laterite. Contracting firms, especially those building new or rehabilitating old roads, became the major customers of these destroyers of Imo environment. Today, the activities of these individuals have not only extensively damaged the banks of the two rivers, but have also extended the environmental degradation to a stretch of over four kilometres.

The natural green verge along the two rivers have been completely destroyed. The natural habitats of fishes have also been adversely affected and fishermen are now counting their losses. Most of them have been forced to try their hands in other economic activities.

This is akin to learning to use the left hand in one’s old age. Similarly, the forests have disappeared. So also are the animals and professional hunters are already forced out of business.

Apart from the foregoing, the high tension electricity transmission lines that run across this devastated land are currently threatened. They may collapse any day unless serious attention is given to the threat. Officials of the Transmission Company of Nigeria have made several trips to the area and even appealed to the Nekede community royal father, government and the sand miners to save the facility from imminent collapse. Nothing has so far changed for the better.

Speaking to Vanguard Metro, VM, the traditional ruler of Nekede autonomous community, Eze Stephen Agumanu, said that sand mining has caused extensive damage to the ecosystem of the area. “Sand excavation is not a welcome development. It is creating a lot of erosion problem. From the Number One Bus Stop, you can see that the sordid acts of these excavators are almost threatening the road leading from Owerri to Nekede very seriously”, the royal father said.

While saying that the excavators dig underneath the earth’s surface, the royal father added that with time, the top layers collapse, leaving a yawning gap in the area. “Most of the arable farmland of Nekede people and the nursery palm department of Imo State Agricultural Development Programme, ADP, have collapsed into the yawning gully,” the traditional ruler grieved.

He recalled that the electricity high tension lines that run across the devastated area, had at various times collapsed, with the attendant economic loss to the citizenry. On what the community had done to stem the ugly development, the royal father said they tried to stop the people from continuing with the environmental degradation. “We went to the extent of reporting them to the state government. Government called for a meeting between these sand excavators and the villagers.

Government had severally given instructions that the excavation be stopped but it has remained largely ignored,” the royal father said. On their part, the sand excavators do not see themselves as agents of environmental degradation, but people carrying out a legitimate business. This they justified by claiming that they obtained their operating licence from the Federal Ministry of Mines, stressing that since they have the licence to do what they are doing from the appropriate government quarters, nobody has the right to stop them.