AT the edge of Amalla community in Udenu Local Council of Enugu State, there once stood a modest house painted by years of laughter, loss and love. It was the kind of home where the past lived gently— where memory was stitched into every doorway.
Today, that home built by the late Stephen Okpe is gone—not because time claimed it or age weakened it, but because bulldozers from China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC) rolled in with just 24 hours’ notice and flattened an entire family’s history in a single afternoon.

A family still grieving is now rendered homeless, their lives long stitched together by resilience: a father buried in 2008, a young daughter lost just two years later, grandparents whose graves rested side by side in the compound, and a mother whose passing in 2020 made the house quieter but still whole.
This was the place the family returned to after every heartbreak, their anchor. On November 4, 2025, that anchor was suddenly uprooted.

According to Joy Ogochukwu, the eldest daughter of the late Stephen Okpe, “They told us the government is coming to settle us,” her voice carrying the softness of someone replaying a nightmare she cannot wake from.

“Government came last year and wrote everything down—the rooms, our things… even the surroundings. They promised to pay us before touching the house.”

No one returned—only the machines did. “Scatter everything and continue the work,” they were told. Three months before the demolition, Joy and her family had begun to sense danger as workers warned them that the government had withdrawn its promises of compensation, a claim that felt absurd, even impossible; after all, how does a government reverse its own assurances, and how does a family prepare for a loss they have no power to negotiate?

Yet the bulldozers arrived, humming with finality, tearing into the very ground where memories lay buried. What they destroyed was far more than concrete, for the Okpe compound held four graves—Mr. Nicodemus Okpe (1991), Mr. Stephen Okpe  (January 10,  2008), little Chisom Okpe (February 1, 2011), and Mrs Monica Okpe  (November 2,  2020),each a chapter of the family’s history, all of them disrupted in one fell swoop.

When the earth was first excavated, one of the graves cracked open.
Ogochukwu’s voice breaks as she remembers: “I believe it was my grandmother’s. She was buried not too long ago.

“Seeing the soil open like that… it felt like losing her all over again.”

In that moment, development became devastation. Progress became pain. And road construction became the erasure of a family’s sacred place.
Now living in a single cramped room, with no compensation, no relocation plan, and no answers, the family scrambled to survive.

“We are all squeezing into a one-room apartment. We wanted to stay in our grandmother’s house, but there is no space. Some of our things are there, but we cannot stay,” she said.
Five persons sharing one room, their future suddenly cut in half. The younger children still try to attend school, while Ogochukwu and her sister shoulder responsibilities far beyond their years. Their mother stays strong, but the weight of displacement hangs heavily on them all.

The late Stephen Okpe, father of the house, died young but his love built the home.
His children preserved it as a living memory of who they once were and the dreams they once held.

Just one institution responded quickly; St Kizito’s Old Boys Association (SKOBA), the Seminary in Iyegu, Idah in Kogi State, where the late Stephen was among the first set, led by Fr. Thomas Edogbanya, who raised the alarm the moment the tragedy was shared.
His verdict was clear: “This is not development. This is a human tragedy. A family’s history cannot be bulldozed without justice.”

What the Okpe family needs now is immediate investigation into the demolition, compensation as originally guaranteed, and temporary shelter or relocation to restore their dignity.
They are also calling for the respectful recovery or reburial of the disturbed graves, as well as accountability from CHEC and the supervising federal authorities. Support from non-governmental organisations, faith-based institutions, and public-spirited Nigerians have become essential as the family stands in the rubble, still holding on to hope.

Amalla has grown quieter these days. Where the Okpe home once stood, there is now only a wide, bare clearing, exposed and painfully bright under the sun. Yet the family remains, moving carefully through the silence, searching for memories, gathering fragments of the life that was taken from them, and waiting—still—for someone in authority to acknowledge their loss and recognise their humanity.

Ogochukwu’s final words sit heavy: “We lost our home. We lost our past. We lost the graves of our parents. All we want now is help… and justice.”
This is not merely a story of demolition—it is the story of a family who woke up one morning with a home and went to bed that same night with nothing left at all.
Responding, Director of Information at the Federal Ministry of Works, Mohammed Ahmed, said the Okpes were economical with the truth, stressing that they went out of their way to negotiate compensation with the contractor instead of waiting for the Enugu State Government that had marshalled out comprehensive arrangements for the compensation.
Explaining further, he alleged that the Okpes started raising issues after they found out that the amount they got was too meagre.
Ahmed also told The Guardian that the comptroller has suspended further demolition pending when all compensations have been paid.

However,  Ogochukwu denied collecting  compensation from any contractor. She challenged anyone claiming to have given the family anything to provide evidence.

“Nothing like that, not even N1 was given to the family except they connived with some ghosts to collect money or some people have connived to collect money from poor people like us, not a kobo was given to us.
“The government only came to take the picture of the house, promising to return. All of a sudden, they came with 24 hours notice and did the worst,” she added.