Life In Erosion-Prone Enclaves
By Oba Joseph Michael
From Ogbeozoma in Delta to Auchi in Edo, from the Ikoli River in Bayelsa to Agulu Nanka in Anambra, gully erosion is carving up the landscape, displacing families, and threatening entire communities. A new €175 million climate adaptation project offers hope, but for many, help cannot come soon enough
By Oba Joseph Michael
In Ogbeozoma community, Okpanam, Oshimili North Local Government Area of Delta State, the earth has opened its mouth. A gully, deep enough to swallow heavy duty vehicles, has split the community in two. The road that once connected homes, markets, and schools has been consumed. In its place, residents have erected makeshift wooden bridges made from flimsy planks that sway over a chasm of red earth and rushing floodwater. During heavy rains, these bridges become death traps.
Mrs. Augustina Agba, a trader, has watched her livelihood wither. “Everyone can see that the community is gradually becoming uninhabitable, but as homeowners, we have nowhere else to go,” she said. Her husband, a civil servant, obtained a cooperative loan to build their home. That home now sits on the edge of collapse. “We appeal to both the federal and state governments to come to our aid before disaster strikes. When we built here, the environment was safe, but today the situation has changed completely.”
Mr. Tony Nnwabueze, a cement dealer, has seen construction grind to a halt. The gully has swallowed the centre of a major road stretching more than three kilometres. “People have stopped building and many ongoing projects have been suspended because access to project sites has become difficult,” he said. The implications are life threatening. “A sick person could die before reaching a point where they can access transportation to a health facility. That is how bad the situation has become.”
Mr. Johnson Omoni, a landlord, recalled a harrowing incident in which a mother and her child were swept off a wooden bridge during a downpour. They were rescued, but the memory haunts the community. “Every building now has a wooden bridge connecting it to the road,” Omoni said. “During heavy rainfall, these bridges become extremely dangerous because of the force of the floodwaters.”
Mr. Samson Kenechi, of the landlords’ association, said the Delta State Government had provided a counterpart fund to attract support through the European Investment Bank backed Nigeria Erosion and Watershed Management Project (NEWMAP). “We appreciate the efforts made so far,” Kenechi said, “but we appeal to the federal and state governments to expedite action and save our community from this devastating environmental threat.”
Ogbeozoma is not alone. Across Nigeria’s South South and South East regions, gully erosion has become a defining environmental catastrophe actively swallowing communities, destroying infrastructure, and forcing mass displacement. From Delta to Edo, Bayelsa to Anambra, the earth is collapsing, and the people are running out of places to run.
Delta State, with its vast Niger Delta terrain of loose sandy soils and heavy seasonal rainfall, has become a hotspot for gully erosion. The Ogbeozoma community in Okpanam, within the Asaba Capital Territory, exemplifies the crisis. What began as a small depression has metastasised into a multi kilometre gully system that has cut off access roads, threatened buildings, and rendered the community increasingly uninhabitable.
The geology is unforgiving. The region’s soils made of cohesion less sands with low bulk density and insufficient binding material are highly susceptible to erosion when exposed to concentrated runoff. Human activities; poor drainage, unregulated construction, deforestation, and the channeling of stormwater from roads into natural drainage pathways, compounds the vulnerability.
The community’s landlords’ association has tried to contain the problem, but the magnitude has overwhelmed their resources. Without intervention, Ogbeozoma faces the same fate; abandonment, displacement, and the erasure of a way of life, that has befallen countless other Deltan communities.
For three decades, Auchi, the headquarters of Etsako West Local Government Area and home to the Federal Polytechnic Auchi, was called an “earthquake zone.” Not because the ground shook, but because it vanished. Gullies up to 35 metres deep split roads, devoured farmlands, and dropped houses into ravines overnight. Residents learned to sleep with “one eye open,” as hypertension and insomnia spread alongside the cracks.
Soil erosion was already identified as “one of the serious forms of land degradation in the Auchi area” by the early 1980s. Satellite data from 1981 to 2014 showed the gullies were “active, expanding with alarming annual frequencies and positive magnitude of change, engulfing other land areas with diverse use.” Researchers identified both natural and human triggers including excessive rainfall, erodible Ajali Sandstone geology, deforestation, poor drainage, unregulated sand mining, and building without channels.
By 2005, studies estimated that 531,417 tonnes of sediment had been removed from Auchi gullies. By 2012, analysis of satellite imagery showed 37,913 square metres of land lost between 2006 and 2012 alone, with expansion at 6,318.8 square metres per year.
“Entire homes have collapsed into the pit. Over 50 families have lost their houses,” residents reported. Rabiu Momoh, living on the fringe of Iyekhe gully, said: “My house is under serious threat. Each time it rains, my heart is always in my heart… now the erosion is right on my doorstep.” Dr. Momoh Usman, Head of Mass Communication at the Federal Polytechnic Auchi, warned that “Many landlords have already lost their homes and have been forced to become tenants due to the devastating effects of erosion.”
The government has not been idle. Under Governor Adams Oshiomhole, a N5.7 billion World Bank/Edo State contract was awarded to Setraco to check Auchi gullies. By July 2015, 27 per cent was completed. NEWMAP later restored Igbei by building two Flood Detention Ponds and a long stretch of concrete channels and Box Culverts from the Auchi Okene Highway to a major Storm Water outlet. The Otaru of Auchi, HRH Alhaji Aliru H. Momoh, scored NEWMAP “100 percent.” Engineer Bello Momoh, a resident, said: “Now we can sleep with our two eyes closed… I have seen good concrete work that has already been done around the gullies.”
But the gaps remain stark. In 2023, residents complained that “the erosion was not captured when former Edo State governor, Adams Oshiomhole awarded the contract.” In 2025, youths protested, citing Water Tanker Road, Utsokhwilli, and Auchi Igarra Road as active sites. “People now live on the edge, especially during the rainy season. Each rainfall brings fear, as the gully creeps closer to what is left of their properties. This is not just erosion; it is a slow, ongoing displacement.”
Edo’s Ecological Fund chair says over 60 gully sites exist statewide. “To resolve and remediate one gully, we need between N5bn to N6bn. We have some that will cost N20bn.” Edo North is “hardest hit.” Governor Monday Okpebholo visited gully sites in 2025 and promised to address them “but would follow due process.” For Auchi, every rainy season is a deadline.
In Bayelsa State, the crisis has reached an even more urgent dimension. In December 2023, the House of Representatives adopted a motion by Hon. Oboku Abonsizibe Oforji, calling for immediate action against ravaging gully erosion in Yenagoa, Obogoro, Famgbe, Ikolo, and other communities within and around the Ikoli River.
The lawmakers urged the National Emergency Management Agency to ensure resettlement of displaced residents and provide relief materials. They mandated the Committee on Environment to tour affected communities and report back within four weeks.
Oforji stressed the need to tackle the menace to save communities from extinction. The ravaging effect of coastal and gully erosion, he noted, had resulted in devastating consequences. He cited Section 14(2)(b) of the Constitution that the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government; a pointed reminder that the state is failing in its most basic duty.
The Ikoli River communities face a double threat: coastal erosion from rising sea levels and land reclamation, combined with inland gully erosion driven by heavy rainfall and unstable soils. The result is significant land degradation, destruction of homes and infrastructure, and the loss of livelihoods for fishing and farming communities that have depended on the river for generations.
If there is a ground zero for Nigeria’s gully erosion crisis, it is the Agulu Nanka Oko Ekwulobia complex in Anambra State. The Agulu Nanka gully is one of the largest and most destructive in the country. Gullies of up to 120 metres in depth and two kilometres in width have been recorded. The erosion has washed away key roadways, destroyed hundreds of homes, and displaced thousands of families.
According to the Anambra State Ministry of Environment, the state has lost over 30 per cent of its land mass to erosion, with over 40 per cent of total land and homes under threat. More than 700 erosion sites have been identified. The Agulu Nanka complex alone has swallowed 787 houses and 325 hectares of farmland belonging to 567 households. The gullies threaten to sweep away the homes of about 1,825 families as channels continuously expand at an alarming rate.
Residents have reported deaths bearing adults and children who fell into gullies or drowned during erosion events. Thousands have been displaced. One elderly man in Nanka lamented, “Already my fence has been consumed by the erosion. If the menace finally takes my building, I do not have any place to run to with my family.”
Academic research confirms the horror. A 2024 study in the Journal of Sustainability and Environmental Management found that across Agulu, Nanka, Oko, and Ekwulobia, local people reported strikingly similar effects of loss of farmland (cited by 50 to 60 per cent of respondents), destruction of homes, loss of lives, roads cut off, and reduced income. The devastation is universal.
The causes are both natural and human induced. The region’s geology which is loosely consolidated sandstones, friable rocks, and clayey soils creates unavoidable vulnerability. But human activities including deforestation, bush burning, sand mining, poor road construction without drainage, improper channeling of runoff, dumping of refuse on waterways, and uncontrolled grazing have accelerated the process.
Some researchers trace the origins of the Nanka gully to the slave trade era, when hidden bush footpaths used by merchants became heavily flooded. Others point to the Nigerian Civil War, when trench digging and explosives across Igboland empowered the ravaging erosion sites that now mar the landscape.
The Federal High Court gully in Awka is another stark example. The gully, caused by the abrupt termination of drainage channels built as part of the Judiciary road construction, has devastated Nodu village in Okpuno and Umuzocha village in Awka. Many community members have lost ancestral farmlands and properties. The Environmental and Social Management Plan for the site warned that the “Do Nothing” alternative would worsen poverty, cut off agricultural communities, and perpetuate fear and anxiety with each rainy season.
The scale of the crisis has not gone unnoticed. In 2010, President Goodluck Jonathan requested World Bank assistance. The result was NEWMAP, an eight year, multi sectoral initiative initially covering seven states. It has since scaled out to twenty states, including Delta.
In 2026, a major new initiative promises to accelerate erosion control. The Nigeria Climate Adaptation Erosion and Watershed Project, a €175 million European Investment Bank financed project implemented by the Federal Ministry of Environment with UNOPS support, is the first EIB financed project in Sub Saharan Africa solely dedicated to climate adaptation.
The project will reduce vulnerability to soil erosion by building gully restoration and watershed management infrastructure across 23 states. It builds on NEWMAP to strengthen federal and state institutional capacity.
In May 2026, a capacity building workshop brought together experts from UNOPS, 22 participating states, and federal and state project units. Three hundred people received training. Project site visits were conducted across Delta State.
Minister of Environment Balarabe Lawal said the project “will safeguard lives, protect farm lands and infrastructure, and enhance livelihoods across communities within 23 states.” Roger Stuart, Head of EIB Regional Hub for West/Central Africa, described the launch as “the kind of practical long term support the EIB is committed to delivering in partnership with Nigeria.”
UNOPS will provide €10.7 million in implementation support. For communities like Ogbeozoma, Auchi, the Ikoli River settlements, and Agulu Nanka, this project represents a lifeline. But the gap between promise and delivery remains wide.
Behind every statistic is a human story. In Ogbeozoma, a civil servant’s cooperative loan is dissolving into the earth. In Auchi, a 40-year old community is being swallowed at 6,318 square metres per year. In Nanka, an elderly man watches his fence disappear and wonders where his family will go. In Bayelsa, fishing communities face extinction as the land beneath them crumbles into the Ikoli River.
The socioeconomic impacts cascade through generations. Loss of farmland means food insecurity. Destruction of roads means isolation and economic strangulation. Displacement means fractured communities and the trauma of becoming a refugee in one’s own country. The psychological burden; hypertension, anxiety and despair are silent epidemic.
Climate change is intensifying the threat. More total rainfall and more frequent high intensity events accelerate erosion rates. Rising sea levels push coastal erosion further inland.
The necessary interventions are known including proper drainage integrated into all road construction, environmental impact assessments before infrastructure projects, afforestation and vegetative slope stabilization, resettlement and compensation for displaced families, and sustained investment in gully remediation using engineering and bio engineering approaches.
The €175 million EIB project offers a chance to break the cycle of empty promises. If the funds reach the ground, if training translates into competent implementation, if safeguards are genuinely enforced, then these communities may yet be saved.
But time is not on Nigeria’s side, with every rainy season the gullies deepen, with every storm more earth collapses. Every year of delay, more homes are lost, more families displaced, more children deprived of a future.
As Mrs. Agba of Ogbeozoma put it, with a quiet desperation that echoes across four states, “When we built here, the environment was safe, but today the situation has changed completely.”
The question is whether the Federal and State government, alongside international partners can reverse the change before it is too late.