AN Anambra millionaire has threatened to commit suicide unless Governor Willie Obiano comes to his aid and helps repair his badly damaged mansion that was almost swept away by the heavy flooding in the state.  

Over the last week, Anambra State has been deluged with heavy flooding as a result of incessant rainfall and no fewer than 20 people have been declared missing. More than 100 buildings and vehicles were destroyed by the floods which ravaged Oduke, Ibollo and Owelleaja layouts in Obosi, near Onitsha, the state's commercial capital. 

Oduke and Ibollo residents say that the flooding was caused by the wrong channelling of drainage by a construction company that rehabilitated the Ezeiweka Road in Awada Obosi. Last Thursday, torrential rainfall that lasted for about two hours left the entire area flooded and parents have been searching frantically for their missing children swept away in the floods.

 Angry residents of Oduke Layout blocked the busy Ezeiweka-Obosi Road that connects travellers to the Onitsha-Owerri highway chanting war songs. According to the protesters, they voted massively for Chief Willie Obiano during the last governorship election that made him governor and called on him to visit their area for an on-the-spot assessment of their problems with a view to addressing them urgently before they all perish. 

Among the properties damaged in the flood included two four-storey buildings still under construction at Owelle Aja. Also destroyed were several residential buildings, fences, schools, churches and vehicles at Oduke and Ibollo were either submerged completely or pulled down by the rampaging floods. 

Nicholas Okechukwu, the chairman of Oduke Landlords Association and his Ibollo counterpart, Chimezie Osuchukwu, in separate speeches, said that they have been crying out to the Anambra State government to come to their aid since 2013 till now but all to no avail. They lamented that the problem of the area is man-made and they have spent all within their resources to handle the situation but help has not come from any outside quarter. 

Putting the estimated loss of properties from the current incident to about N2bn (£6.4m), they called on the Anambra State government to declare a state of emergency in the layout and address the problem holistically. At the International Electronics Market, Onitsha about 1,500 shops and goods worth over N800m (£2.58m) were also damaged by flood.

 Secretary of the market, Comrade Damian Ogudike said: “We pay our taxes and levies to the state government. Drainage is the problems and the expectation is that the state government should work on the drains to be higher than they are now." 

He added that some traders are insisting that the money they paid to the government should be refunded to them since their problems are not being solved. Onitsha is home to the largest market in sub-Saharan Africa.