Akatom/Bunyia Dam Disaster, Postponing The Evil Days By Peter Ata Ogar

By | Peter Ata Ogar PhD, MNES

The Bunyia/Akatom Dam is an ongoing project of the Federal Ministry of Water Resources, Cross River Basin Development Authority, Oweni Nigeria Limited (Contractor) and Strategic Hydro Services Limited (Consultants). It lies between Longitude 06 29’ 16.9” and 06 29’ 18.0” and Latitude 008 59’ 18.8” and 008 59’ 19.9”, with an altitude of between 139m and 148m. 

The commencement of operations on the dam was greeted with a mixture of consternation and confusion as the people never understood the importance or otherwise of the project. The haughtiness with which the lands were marked out and acquired to form catchments for the dam project was received with disdain by the people. In all, there was joy and sadness, with bevy of admirations from some quarters and tight-knitted coterie of critics from others. It is often said that there is no substitute for accurate knowledge, but in the case of Bunyia/Akatom dam, the people were either uninformed, misinformed or mislead to giving off their ancestral lands. The purported EIA carried out had no inputs/active participation during the scoping process from experts and knowledgeable people from the affected communities on Environment matters.

SEE ALSO: 3 Dead, 6 Unconscious As Canoe Capsized In Boki LGA 

The process of land acquisition deliberately sundered relationships, dividing brothers from brothers. One will be save to say it brought nothing but misery and perfidy to the people and robbed them of their inherited lands and the resources of the land that hitherto were of economic benefits to them and which expectedly would also be for their progenies. Land were acquired without commensurate compensations, this claim is borne out of the fact that affected persons and communities were not privy to experts/consultants that had good knowledge of ecological economics and quantification of environmental resources over space and time in economic terms. Irruan is a typical tropical rainforest ecosystem that is richly endowed with endemic and critically endangered species of wild flora and fauna that includes flora species like, Milicia excelsia (Iroko), Triplochiton scleroxylon (Obeche) and so on and fauna species like Chimpanzee Pan troglodytes, Gorilla Gorilla gorilla as well as other mammals, aves, reptiles and amphibians.

My last visit to the project site met speckling of death tree stands around the strands of the river and adjoining environments. Farmlands that were once richly cropped and interspersed with cocoa, plantains, bananas and other food crops had become a shadow of themselves unappreciative to behold; there were no precautionary/safety signs anywhere on site to warn/wade off people from high risk areas of the project, just as there was no human guide to direct movements of people around the project site to ensure safety of lives; there were changes in water flow resulting from the construction of the dam, as there was blockage of upstream and downstream movement of migratory river animals; there was downstream erosion of sedimentary deposits and increased sediments build-ups in formally fast flowing water bodies; there was loss of river banks and shores that were once used for farming local vegetable species; there were incidences of arable farmlands being flooded due to dam/rivers channels overflowing theirs banks and other potential adverse consequences of the project (externalities) were beginning to manifest.

The accident of Wednesday 28th November, 2018 that claimed innocent valuable lives of young and growing members of the affected communities cannot be unconnected to changes in lifestyles and culture dilution brought about by the dam project. Irruan has no riverine/fishing communities and canoe has never been a means of transport to and from our farms. Issues such as this ought to have been properly captured during the Social Impact Assessment stage of EIA of the project before commencement and appropriate mitigation measures and safeguards predicted and proper implementation diligently monitored. It is often said that there is no development without destruction, but this is destruction too devastating from a project that seems tended to imprecision, vague and mystics with no specific timeframe for completion, commissioning and adherence to strict engineering, environmental, ecological, scientific, socio-economic and health standards. It leaves us with inklings that the project might not go as imagined.

One cannot but wonder why a project which once filled our hearts with joy now leaves us with deep sense of sadness, Sadness to learn that our loved ones are dying (for this is not the first deaths recorded) in their numbers in this internecine human negligence and horrifying spasm of tragedies. Who will speak for us and save us from even greater evils in future, for we may just be postponing the evil day. Relevant authorities must expedite actions at completing the project, establish buffers to prevent human encroachments during and after the project is completed; Impact Mitigation Monitoring should be carried out by relevant government bodies, consultants and project contractor and all safeguards and measures implemented to forestall future loss of lives and other sordid events.