During this year’s Valentine’s Day celebration in February, came a forecast by the African Development Bank expecting a positive economic outlook for the 1.5 billion people living in Africa, but only if climate change problems do not put a damper on things.

Up to 4.1 percent GDP growth has been predicted for the continent in 2025, with 4.4 percent poised for the year after, but what are the figures all worth when one of the parts suffers ecological disasters year-in-year-out?

For several years, as sea-level rise worsens in scale and soon starts to develop multidimensional impacts that are mostly destructive, sinkholes have simultaneously littered Anambra State in the southeast of Nigeria, hence why here is regarded as Africa’s erosion capital.

Earth science journals and advocacy groups often feel like they cannot emphasise it enough, how they think such an image or title must be made to feel inapplicable very soon into the future. Ahead of President Bola Tinubu’s official visit to Anambra on Thursday to commission projects, the Ekwulummiri Town situated there has been indicating discomfort over more devastation on their land, which needs to be stopped.

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Not like complaints and save our souls calls are new – it is just that now, this cry for help has been growing with intensity. Particularly in the Nnewi South Local Government Area of this southeastern state where families are reported to have been displaced anytime there has been recent erosion damage.

Over in Nnewi, three villages – Umudim, Urueze and Isigwu have mostly suffered the pain. They fall under the Nnewi South Local Government Area, and a member of the general community, Mr. Chinedu Anyaso, in late April, called on Governor Chukwuma Soludo to attract urgent remedial intervention, which President Tinubu appears to be providing.

Before the president’s Thursday trip, the demand from Mr. Anyaso was clear, having seen about 15 houses go down with the plague-like gully erosion that is about to cut off a federal government-constructed road in the area.

We are calling on Gov. Chukwuma Soludo to declare a state of emergency on Ekwulummiri gully erosion, we are also calling on the Federal Government and the international community to intervene.

As a people, we have carried out control and remedial measures like planting of trees, construction of drainage and creation of catchment pits to reduce the impact, but we are facing flood from about four communities from the upland.

So far, a State House release published yesterday has given the assurance that work to tackle the environmental menace is already underway. It mattered that the words of affirmation came from the state governor himself, Soludo, drawing a comparison between two eras of leadership.

The last state visit by a president was in 2012, ostensibly to commission a brewery and another private enterprise. This visit is not just to commission projects. We have over 500 kilometres of roads, flyovers, and bridges completed and waiting for commissioning.

What you commissioned today, Mr. President, are mere symbolisms of the audacity of our dreams for a new Anambra state. Like the Americans would say, you haven’t seen anything yet.

The State House publication said Soludo praised President Tinubu’s economic reforms and federal infrastructure projects benefiting the region—such as the rehabilitation of the Enugu-Onitsha Road, the Second Niger Bridge access roads, and ongoing erosion control measures. He described them as game-changers for the Southeast.

Ayodele Johnson

Ayodelé is a Lagos-based journalist and the Content and Editorial Coordinator at Meiza. All around the megacity, I am steering diverse lifestyle magazine audiences with ingenious hacks and insights that spur fast, informed decisions in their busy lives.