Inside Benue communities where residents dig shallow pits to get dirty drinking water

BY AWO JAIRUS

Story Highlights

• Scarcity of clean and safe water is on the rise across Benue communities.
• Residents say several people have died as a result of the contaminated water.
• Villagers suffer from diarrhea and typhoid.
• Most of the communities have been left to their fate.

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It was about 11am when this reporter disembarked from the rickety taxi that took him through the long drive from Makurdi to Agasha motor park in Guma LGA. The weather was hot and even the sand had been heated up. A handful of residents were seen taking shelter by the entrances of their huts. The sleepy community was troubled and the troubles were evident on the faces of its residents.

The community river once served the residents so well that they never felt the need to have boreholes. The river which was once clean and “safe for consumption” has now dried up, resulting in extreme water scarcity.

A significant number of residents rely on a shallow well dug inside a swamp beside the dried-up river. Although water from the well is unclean, residents have no choice but to queue up daily with different sizes of bowls and basins to fetch.

But before they ingest the water, they must make sure to boil it.

“Every day I come here and see the water dried up, it makes me cry,” said an old woman addressed as Mama.

“Now, not only do we use dirty water, it is not enough for everyone. To have water at all for your daily usage, you will have to wake up around 3am to join a long queue.”

Although the wells dug in some compounds provide cleaner water to the residents, they dry up once the rainy season is over.

“And when that happens, we usually fall back on swampy areas for water. That’s where diseases like the one that made me blind come from,” said James, an elderly resident of Agasha.

Mike Igber, chairman of the water, sanitation and hygiene committee (WASHCom) in Agasha, said the military once donated a hand pump borehole to the community but it stopped working “a long time ago” and no attempt has been made to fix it.

“The saddest tale is that no state government in the last 50 years has ever done anything about the community’s water dearth,” said Igber.

At the community health centre, the water used in treating patients was not much better. Although there is a motorised borehole at the clinic, the faucets are no longer functioning, hence the clinic resorts to a 60-feet well that also serves some villagers. The well is without a cover, while the water is milky and has black particles.

“We have a few common diseases and health challenges in this area,” said Fabian Tarki, one of the officials at the health centre.

“Some of the diseases commonly troubling our residents in this community are diarrhea, typhoid fever and malaria. And I tell you these are on a high scale.

“And whether we like it or not, all of them can be traced to bad water. We seriously have a major challenge of bad water in this community and we urgently need intervention to save our lives.”

We use dirty water to ‘bathe, cook, wash’ in Ipaav

Like it is in Agasha, the river in Ipaav, Gboko LGA, once served the community, but these days, it has dried up and the residents have dug a makeshift well in a swamp around the area. Although the water is unclean, residents have no choice but to use it for their daily needs.

Joseph Agibee Terlumun, the community spokesperson, said it’s disheartening watching the residents drink the water.

“I was born in this community just as my father was. Though, I wouldn’t know how long this community is; but I can state categorically that I have never seen any government agencies here,” he said.



“It is only during electioneering when some of them will send their boys to come and give us things like seasonings and salt just to vote for them.

“We use this water to bathe, cook, wash our plates and clothes. In short, we use it for everything water is used for because we don’t have any other water. It is this one we drink most of the time because going to someone else’s well could result in insults being hurled on you; so we resolved to manage our own water.”

Terhundu Agibee, a mother of five, said the health officials have advised her to stop giving the water to her children.

“My youngest child is the only one that has never tasted that water,” she said.

“They advised that I should wait until after six months of birth before trying to give her. And while I have given my other children the water, I have to give this one someday too because there is nothing I can do.”

Oye, where an unknown epidemic ‘killed many’

Surrounded by rivers on every side, water scarcity is not a problem in Oye-Obi, a community in Oju LGA. But while water is always available, the River Obi which the community relies on is permanently unclean; it is dirty and has an offensive smell.

Regardless of the state of the water, residents are always at the river bank to scoop some for their daily use.

When this reporter visited, women were found milling around the river bank with their basins and bowls while three men fetched water into a canoe, after which they lifted it on their shoulders and headed for the village square where they distributed it to vulnerable and older residents.

At the only motorised borehole outlet in the community, women and children queued up to fetch as little or as much as they could get. Some were lucky while others went back home disappointed. Water is pumped once daily from the solar-powered borehole, and once it is exhausted, the residents would have to wait till the next day.



“Ours is now like a community that has never been a part of Benue state or this whole country,” says 72-year-old Abraham Ogbu Ijih.

“Our lives are now marked by abject poverty and poor living conditions. We are surrounded by water and forest on every side. Yet, we are thirsty with no access to clean water.”

Ijih, a visually impaired man who has lived in Oye all his life, said he lost his wife and children to a “water epidemic” in 2020.

“I went blind six years ago. I wasn’t blind from childhood. But in 2020, I lost my wife and three children to water impurities. There was a period in this community where a water epidemic killed about 273 people according to our communal records,” the former rice farmer said.



“Before her death, my wife was my strong support who took care of me, dressed me, and of course, provided food for me. My only surviving child is little Christiana, who survived the water epidemic.”

The community prince, simply addressed as Ogbaji, said he was also a victim of the unknown epidemic.

“In fact, it led to the deployment of officials of the National Centre for Diseases Control (NCDC) about one year ago,” he said. “Sadly, till now, NCDC has not been able to provide a name for the ailments and therefore, no medications have been prescribed to help us.”

Clement Onaa, chairman of Oju LGA, acknowledged the water problems in the communities but said there has been some intervention from the state and federal governments.

“We are working in collaboration with the state government and the federal ministry of water resources and environmental sanitation and we have recorded some level of intervention,” he said.

“Some of those interventions include the provision of solar-powered motorised boreholes to the people of Oye-Obi. The community had water pollution sometime ago and part of the interventions was to ameliorate their plight of bad water.

“Waters in our place are always recharged with rainfall and whenever there is no rainfall, the volume of water reduces.”

Onaa called on the state and federal government to provide more boreholes to the affected communities.