(Mother of the four children killed in the mishap. Photo by Vanguard News)
A weekend landslide triggered by torrential rainfall has claimed the lives of four siblings in Ikot Awatin community, Calabar Municipality, Cross River State.
The incident happened just three days after floodwaters caused the d£ath of a one-year-old child and destroyed property worth millions of naira along Mayne Avenue by Atu Street in Calabar South Local Government Area.
The four siblings who lost their lives were identified as Bright Kingsley Edu, 18; Godswill Kingsley Edu, 12; Daniel Kingsley Edu, 11; and Richard Kingsley Edu, 10 the sons and daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley Edu.
They were buried alive alongside a man identified only as Mr. Udo, a tanker driver attached to a fuel depot. Community youths worked through the night, digging through the rubble with bare hands and shovels, before all five victims were eventually recovered dead.
Narrating her ordeal, the children’s mother, Mrs. Mercy Kingsley Edu, popularly known within the community as Mama Uwana, said Friday had started like any other day.
She had taken her children to evening church service, and as the rain intensified, the children left ahead of her to beat the storm home, while their father, a security officer, was away on official duty. None of them suspected it would be the children’s last walk home.
She explained that on getting home, the children changed into dry clothes and lay down to rest, unaware that the saturated ground above their house was already giving way.
Moments later, the landslide struck, burying the house and trapping them beneath the debris.
Speaking at the scene on Saturday, a distraught Mrs. Edu, a waterleaf farmer who lost not only her children but everything she owned, struggled to find words for her loss.
She lamented that everything had been buried in the landslide, taking her children and leaving the family hopeless and homeless.
Wailing, she asked why it had happened to her, noting that four of her seven children were gone in a single day.
She said her husband never spent money on himself because he wanted his three sons and daughter to go to school, and now all of them were gone.
Her husband, Mr. Kingsley Edu, stood at the scene in silence as sympathisers and neighbours gathered around the couple to offer comfort.
The four children were buried shortly after their bodies were recovered, while Mr. Udo’s remains were deposited in a morgue, leaving his family to cope with the sudden loss of a breadwinner who had simply been doing his job on a stormy night.
Residents and sympathisers who visited the scene expressed shock at the scale of the devastation and appealed to the Cross River State Government and well-meaning Nigerians to come to the aid of the Edu family, who lost four children and their home in a single night.
The Cross River State Emergency Management Agency, led by its Director-General, Mr. Efa Nyong, working alongside the Disaster Management Unit of the Nigerian Red Cross Society, carried out a three-hour on-the-spot assessment of the site on Saturday.
The team, which included the Red Cross’s Disaster Management Officer, Mr. Agbor Okim, and the agency’s Head of Relief and Rehabilitation, Mrs. Preye Obo, inspected the wreckage, spoke with grieving family members, and documented the extent of the destruction.
Mr. Nyong described the children’s d£aths as heartbreaking and conveyed the state government’s sympathy to the bereaved families, assuring residents that government would work with relevant stakeholders to provide support.
He explained that the assessment would guide the government’s response, ranging from immediate humanitarian intervention to longer-term measures aimed at reducing the risk of future disasters.
He urged residents in landslide- and erosion-prone communities to remain vigilant, promptly report signs of soil movement or land cracks, and cooperate with authorities whenever evacuation becomes necessary.
Speaking on behalf of the affected families, Mr. Bassey Patrick thanked the assessment team for responding promptly despite the difficult circumstances and called for more emergency assistance for survivors who, in his words, had lost loved ones and were struggling to cope with the aftermath of the disaster.