By Emma Una. CALABAR
In the last one month, beginning from the first week of July, torrential downpours have
continuously inundated Calabar, the Cross River State capital and environs and at its wake are a string of disasters. Read Also: Blood on Oghara Farm Road: Delta’s kidnap kingdom, where trip to harvest cassava could cost your life
Heavy downpours day-in-day-out have kept residents of the city trapped indoors as most streets are left waterlogged and several parts of the city flooded. School children couldn’t attend school, night life brought to a standstill and markets bereft of commercial activities. The rains have brought severe pains to the city and its inhabitants. At the last count ten persons have reportedly perished because of the rains, several houses swept away by flood and property worth several hundreds of millions destroyed.
Though, Calabar has always been known to experience high rainfall because of its proximity to the sea with sometimes rain falling throughout the year including dry periods like December and January but the rains of 2026 have been completely unprecedented. The heavy rainfalls have caused landslides in virtually all parts of the city. The first landslide was at Ikot Anwatim in the northern part of the city where some buildings caved into a gully, killing five persons.
A family lost four children and another family, a father was buried in the mud while trying to salvage his children from being swept away by the landslide. Some where along Elijah Hensaw a man drowned in ramping floods and nearby at Webber street , a woman had her one year old son snatched by fierce flood and at Otop Abasi two children also drowned . Around Idim Otop in a place called Boropit, a landslide pulled down a house trapping two girls who were eventually pulled out dead from the mud.
The next disaster spot and the most recent was the one at Diamond Hill beside the former Unicem headquarters. Several houses were swept into the adjoining sea, leaving behind a gaping space and a devastated road which leads to the Naval Base and Calabar Jetty. The impact of these incidents are overwhelming the city as the government is taking measures to assuage the pains of victims affected by the disasters but how can a family whose four children are killed in just one moment or a family whose residence is swept into the sea along with household property be fully assuaged.
Conservationists attribute the high rainfall and attendant flooding which is mostly driven by fierce wind to the relentless deforestation which has left the entire landscape bare and void of any canopy to protect the atmosphere. Last week, the Conservator General of Nigeria National Park Service, Dr Ibrahim Goni, disclosed that 14,000 hectares of Cross River tropical rainforest was destroyed through relentless logging, illegal mining, and uncontrolled agricultural activities in 2025.
Speaking in Calabar during a conference on conservation, Goni stated that “We are all witnesses to the devastating floods that are taking place in Calabar and more of such flooding is on its way. The cause of the flooding is deforestation which is driving rapid climate change and the solution to these frequent disasters is for us to sit and re-examine our actions and inactions, activities and practices and discover where we are going wrong and retrace our steps immediately”. The state government overwhelmed by these ravaging mudslides and flooding which are wreaking havoc across parts the city has called for urgent intervention by the Federal Government to avert what it called “an impending ecological disaster”.
Speaking at the site of the Diamond Hill landslide, near the Calabar Jetty, the state’s Deputy Governor, Dr Peter Odey said the disasters are a grim reminder of the environmental vulnerability the state is facing and appealed for urgent help. Odey said the magnitude of the destruction has surpassed the state’s capacity because the city might be submerged eventually and therefore requires immediate deployment of federal technical expertise and ecological resources
“We received reports of this landslide after yesterday’s heavy rainfall, and it became necessary for us to come here and see things for ourselves. We have directed the Commissioner for Works to mobilise immediately to the site because government cannot afford to delay in responding to a disaster of this magnitude. Our priority is to secure the area, prevent further destruction and protect lives and property,” Odey stated.
While commending the swift response of relevant agencies, the Deputy Governor disclosed that officials of the National Emergency Management Agency , NEMA, currently in Cross River State, had already visited the scene, stressing that close collaboration between the state and Federal Government would be indispensable in tackling the crisis. “We have about fourteen directors from NEMA presently in Cross River State, and I have been informed they have already inspected this site. I will be meeting with them in my office, and we may return here together because this is a challenge that requires genuine collaboration between the Cross River State Government and the Federal Government. It is beyond what any single institution can effectively handle.”
He noted that Calabar may soon be totally submerged and lost to mudslide if nothing urgent is done . Odey lamented that the Diamond Hill mudslide was only one among several ecological disasters triggered by recent heavy rains across the state, assuring citizens that the Governor Bassey Otu-led administration was committed to responding promptly to every affected community.
“This is not the only location affected. We have received reports from several parts of Cross River State where erosion and landslides have also occurred. As a responsible government, we will do everything within our capacity to respond immediately. We cannot allow these situations to escalate into humanitarian disasters.”
Expressing relief that no lives were lost despite the severity of the incident, the Deputy Governor nevertheless warned that the state could not continue to rely on fortune, insisting that urgent preventive measures had become imperative. “We thank God that no life was lost here.
We have equally received reports from other affected areas where there were no fatalities. But we must not wait until lives are lost before taking decisive action. Our responsibility is to move swiftly and ensure that these incidents do not recur.”
He further noted that Cross River had long been identified by the Federal Government as one of Nigeria’s environmentally vulnerable states during its hazard mapping exercise, adding that recent events had sadly confirmed those predictions. “They warned us during the hazard mapping exercise that incidents like these could happen, but we never anticipated that the situation would become this serious. Having seen the extent of the damage, we are making a passionate appeal to the Federal Government to intervene urgently. This is not just about financial support; it is about deploying the technical expertise required to permanently solve this problem.”
Odey warned that failure to act promptly could jeopardise critical federal infrastructure, noting that the affected road serves as an access route to strategic federal establishments, including the Nigerian Navy. “You can see that there are federal government institutions around this corridor, including the Nigerian Navy.
If this road is eventually cut off, access to these facilities will be severely disrupted. That is why this intervention is not only important for Cross River State but also for the Federal Government and the nation as a whole.”
“I want to assure the people of Cross River State that this government will act immediately to contain the situation and prevent further destruction. We shall mobilise without delay, and we will continue to engage the Federal Government until lasting solutions are provided. Our response will be swift, coordinated and unwavering.”
