The sleepy communities of Mbiekene, Nnung Obong and Ikot Ntung in Nsit Ubium Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom state have been thrown into mourning, following the collapse of the link bridge between the villages, leading to the drowning of one Miss Idara Friday.
The deceased, a Senior Secondary School (SS2) student of Community Secondary School (CSS), Nnung Obong, it was gathered, was trying to walk through the dilapidated bridge from her nearby village of Mbiekene, when the bridge caved in.
Fighting back tears, the father of the deceased, simply identified as Elder Friday, lamented that “over the years the bridge has remained unattended to by way of repairs,” adding that “only emergency intervention by community youths help the people to cross to other communities”.
“My daughter and other pupils ply the bridge everyday to school in the adjoining community of Nnung Obong, but she happened to be the unfortunate one to pass at the time the bridge collapsed and before the community youths could rush to rescue her, she was already drowned and dead,” Elder Friday recalled.
Urging government to urgently intervene to safeguard further loss of lives, Friday, a local palm wine dealer, added that her daughter was not the only one that died by such accident, adding that similar incidents have occurred in the past, but regretted that such tragedy failed to draw government’s attention.
“It is a very pathetic thing to narrate this sad incident as a father. I left the house very early in the morning for my palm wine business. Some hours later, I received a call from my wife to return home immediately.
“Returning home, the entire neighbouring communities had gathered in my compound, only for me to discover that my daughter is dead.
“The pains we have gone through in raising this child with little income from my farm and palm wine business, if I remember it, the trauma would be too much to bear”, he explained.
Another resident, who identified himself as Mr. Idiong Bassey told Straightnews correspondent that “we have recorded so many casualties since the bridge collapsed and it is becoming too much for us to bear”.
“Last year, one boy would have died same way if not for the quick intervention of the community youths that dredged sands here on the beach, who dived and rescued him before drowning”, he recalled, adding that the communities were in joyous mood when, in 2017, news came that the bridge was going to be fixed.
“Four years down the line, we are still hoping against hope as the administration of governor Udom Emmanuel’s policy is not favourably disposed to rural development and community projects,” he noted.
In the same vein, Mrs. Affiong Asuquo, a local farmer lamented that “it is very difficult to live in these communities as a farmer because whatever we produce here do not have value because they are just for local consumption here because of lack of access road to the big markets.”
She, therefore, appealed to the Emmanuel-led administration to shift focus from his mega industrialization policy and other elitist projects, to tackle the prevailing poverty and infrastructural decay in rural communities spreading across the 31 Local Government Areas.
The state Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Mr. Odiko Macdon, a Police Superintendent (SP), could neither pick nor return calls to his phone on the incident.
