NDDC to rescue endangered Delta State community hit by landslide

The Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) will intervene and avert further damage to houses around Tuomo community waterfront following landslide there a few days ago.

Tuomo in Burutu Local coumcil, Delta State was affected by landslide when the shoreline protection structure collapsed.

The commissioner representing Delta state in the NDDC Board, Ogaga Ifowodo, gave the assurance of providing solution to the slide when he inspected the site in Tuomo yesterday.

Ifowodo said immediate intervention was necessary to protect the houses that were already endangered while awaiting the long lasting solution, explaining that a long lasting solution might involve conducting a deep soil investigation to understand its formation and quality of the underlying layers.

He said: “It is very unfortunate that it happened, the whole ideal of the NDDC intervening is to protect the shorelines, the people and communities along the shoreline. To a large extent, the goals have been achieved, but for the part that failed, it was already protecting the community.

“The first step now is to look for immediate solution to protect those houses that are really endangered by the landslide. But a more lasting solution will be for us to look for the root cause of the problem because failure have happened in two places along the shoreline. So, we need to identify what is responsible for the failure, we might need to do deep soil investigation to understand the soil formation. How soon, I cannot say for now because we are just from inspection, we need to get back to the office and do our report.”

Ifowodo appealed to the Tuomo community to be patient, as urgent step would be taken to address the situation.

Representative of the firm handling the project, Mr.Dada Bamidele, Civil/Operations Manager of Vibroflotation and Geotechnical Nigeria Limited, said that it was an engineering challenge that required well thought out engineering solution.

He disclosed that the contracting firm and NDDC would agree on the economical aspects of the project before adopting a way forward.

Bamidele said landslide was a natural phenomenon and that there are some geographical formation within the soil that might not be obvious within the surface that is responsible for the disaster.