Glory JATO, a recent newlywed federal government employee, is said to have perished in a flood in Oba Ile, Ondo state’s Akure North council district.
Sources claim that the middle-aged man was on his way home from work on Friday when he was washed away by water.
Pastor Gbenga Ojuloge, assistant secretary of the Bethel Estate, Oba Ile Landlords Association, described the victim’s demise as pitiful.
In order to dredge the water and stop similar incidents in the future, Ojuloge claimed that the community needs government assistance.
He said that “houses and residents were no longer protected from the incessant threat of the river, the water had converted to a death trap that always takes life year in and year out.
” All the efforts made by the community to ensure that the flood was kept at bay every year always remained futile.
“We are using this opportunity to draw the attention of both the Federal Government and State Government and the local government to what is actually going on here in our community.
“This is the main access to the community, the flood is already taking what we have used our years of our lives to construct.
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“Everything you can see on the bridge is actually the effort of the landlords of the community, we discovered that the flood will just come and push everything away, so we are calling in the government to come to our aid.
“On Friday we lost a soul here and that is why we are calling and we want everyone to know that this is the main access to all the flood coming from Ijapo, Alagbaka, oja oba, so immediately there is rain, no access to our roads again.
One of the landlords,Olusola Osupala who also spoke with newsmen, said once it rained, access to the estate was always cut off.
Osupala said the community had requested and written to several intervention agencies to help save the situation, but to no avail.
“Over the years, we have been suffering flood in this community and all what you can see in this estate is community effort up to our light, we contributed, we bought transformer, season out of season.
“Infact, couple of days ago, someone died on this bridge because of flood, he was drowned, we don’t have access to the bridge, we don’t have access to our home once it rained.
“We can no longer continue like this, we need government to dredge this river for us,” he said.
Another landlady in the community, Mrs Oluwtosin Ibitoye said the death of the young man was painful as he was part of the rescue party to save the life of the young man.
Ibitoye said once it rained the road would be cut off and residents and children would not be able to go to work and school respectively.
“This road is a major road to all the community and we appeal to the state government to come to our rescue, we do lose lives during the raining season.
She added that ” We have a situation that we do lose people when it rains, on Friday, we lost a young married man to this flood, which is so painful so we appeal to the state government we appeal to Akeredolu to come to our rescue.
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