By ONYEKACHUKWU MELUWA, Warri
The Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) on Thursday assured the people of Tuomo Community in Burutu Local Government Area, Delta State that it will find immediate solutions against the landslide that recently occurred.
The Honourable Commissioner in the NDDC Board, Mr. Ogaga Ifowodo gave the assurance during an inspection visit to the site in Tuomo, Burutu Local Government Area of Delta.
Ifowodo stated that the immediate solution became necessary to protect the houses that were already endangered while awaiting the long lasting solution.
He explained that the long lasting solution might involve conducting a deep soil investigation to understand its formation and quality of the underlying layers.
Only recently, a portion of the shoreline protection project collapsed in Tuomo community.
“It is very unfortunate that it happened, the whole ideal of the NDDC intervening is to protect the shorelines, the people and communities along the shoreline.
” To a large extent, the goals have been achieved, but for the part that failed, it was already protecting the community.
“The first step now is to look for immediate solution to protect those houses that are really endangered by the landslide.
“But a more lasting solution will be for us to look for the root cause of the problem because failure have happened in two places along the shoreline.
“So, we need to identify what is responsible for the failure, we might need to do deep soil investigation to understand the soil formation.
” How soon, I cannot say for now because we are just from inspection, we need to get back to the office and do our report.
“We have two projects there, shoreline protection and concrete pavement along that shoreline, we don’t want both projects to be endangered.
“If we do not take immediate step, we are also exposing ourselves to greater cost of finally remediating the situation because, a stinch in time saves nine.”
Ifowodo appealed to the people to be patient as urgent step would be taken to address the situation.
Mr.Dada, Bamidele, Civil/Operations Manager of Vibroflotation and Geotechnical Nigeria Limited, the contracting firm said that it was an engineering challenge that required engineering solution.
“It is not going to be one party affair, we and our client (NDDC) will agree, how it is going to be economical will be put into consideration before adopting a way forward.
“Landslide is a natural phenomenon, there are some geographical formation within the soil that might not be obvious within the surface that is responsible for the disaster.
“No one prayed for this kind of a thing, if you do a job anywhere, you will be glad to see your work stand overtime and serve its purpose”.
Bamidele urged the community to be more cooperative to ensure that whatever solution proposed would be beneficial to all of them.
Mr. Ebikoro Tabekaemi, an opinion leader in Tuomo community blamed the situation on poor job by the contractor.
“The other portion over there failed about two years ago and now this place, the contractor is not serious with the job, that is the truth”.
