Flood sweeps away new groom in Ondo

A man identified as Mr Glory Jato, who got married earlier this month, has been killed after flood water swept him away at Bethel Estate, Oba Ile community in Akure North Local Government Area.

Jato was said to be returning from work when he was swept away by a flood occasioned by Friday’s downpour, which lasted several hours.

Assistant Secretary of the Landlord Association of Bethel Estate, Oba Ile, Pastor Gbenga Ojuloge, who confirmed the incident, called on the Ondo State government to help dredge the water canal in the area to prevent future occurrence.

Ojuloge said flooding in the area has turned nightmare for residents in the estate.

“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 road to the community and flood is already taking what we have used our years of our lives to construct.

“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 on the government to come to our aid.

“On Friday we lost a soul here and that is why we are calling; we want everyone to know that this is the main access to all the flood coming from Ijapo, Alagbaka, and Oja Oba, so immediately there is rain, no access to our roads again,” he said.

Another landlord, Mr Olusola Osupala, said the community has written letters several to intervention agencies to help save the situation but to no avail.

“Over the years, we have been suffering flood in this community and all that you can see in this estate is community effort up to our light, we contributed, we bought transformer, season out of season.

“In fact, a couple of days ago, someone died on this bridge because of a flood, he was drowned, we don’t have access to the bridge, and we don’t have access to our home once it rained. We can no longer continue like this; we need the government to dredge this river for us.

“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 rainy season.

“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,” she said.

The Nation.