Let start with a picture. She was not less than 60 years old. Her brow was furrowed with the cares of life. She had an empty water can on her head. Closely following her was her grandson of 15. He wore a pair of black stripe pants that was a tad small for him. His flip flops had seen better days. He looked listless from the hunger that was gripping his being. It was early morning. They were on a journey for survival. An odyssey to find the elixir of life or die. Their quarry was a gully on the side of a road some six kilometers away containing muddy water left by rain in days gone by. It took them forty five minutes to make the journey. She heaved a sigh of relief when she saw that her faith in the gully was not misplaced. She and her grandson quickly got down to business lest another person materialized out of nothingness and deprived her of the only source that could sustain their lives. In the most macabre of sights she bent from the waist down and began to scoop water from the gully on the side of the road. . That woman is our mothers who have been reduced to a life of bare existence because of the prodigality of our children. This picture is representative of what you see everywhere in Uromi Kingdom.
It is the year of the LORD 2014. There is no water anywhere in Uromi. it is desert-land.. The taps of Ugbalo Waterworks is dry. The pipes are rusting away. Hon. Itulah the member of the House of Representatives for ENE and ESE shamelessly touts the repair as one of his achievements. While Adam Oshiomhole the hypocritical Governor of Edo is doing propaganda on the amount of boreholes he had dug in Uromi. There is simply a conspiracy to make sure that Uromi is cut off from portable and healthy drinking water. We rely on nature to get drinking water , unwashed water tankers to get water from Ugboha or failing that we rely on watering holes in our villages anathema even to the beasts of the wild. We die in droves from Cholera and other water borne diseases. We walk kilometers to source that poisonous water that is slowly killing us.
Whose fault is it that we don't have portable drinking water in Idoma land? The fault lies squarely at the doorsteps of every tiers of government. Why is the local governments not finding ways to make stop gap provisions of water for us? Why is ENE LG not copying the examples of OGBADIBO and OJU Local governments in Benue State who worked with the UNDP and provided matching funds to ensure that boreholes are done within the patchworks of the communities within those local governments? Why is the state government in dereliction of its duties to repair Ugbalo water works? If Ugbalo is no longer viable why would the Federal government not step in and give us an alternative? What is the plan for water in ENELGA at the long term? What are we willing to do about it as individuals?
The importance of water to our well being cannot be emphasized enough. Water is life. The oceans alone covers 71% of the earth's surface. Our bodies on average is made up of 80% water. We survive without food for 90 days or more. We die without water for 3 to 10 days. Water gives us food. It cleanse us. The absence of this life giving elixir from UROMI milieu more than anything reduces Uromi to one of hard, brutal and intolerable existence. It adds to our poverty in unimaginable ways. It is time to act. I call on the people of every community in Uromi and every Uromian in diaspora(outside Uromi and anywhere in the world) to take matters in their own hands and fashion out the best way forward. Let us where we can dig boreholes for ourselves through self and vote out the goddamned people who we elected and refused to performed. We are the power that be. God bless our Onojie. May his reign be long. God bless Uromi. May it endureth forever. We must survive.
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