Some vehicles coming from the East-West road were last Thursday trapped in a surging flood water along the Owoloma and Obi Wali Road in Rumuigbo Community in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area of Rivers State.
The flood caused by a heavy downpour in the area, also resulted to heavy gridlock in most of the roads in the community and Ikwerre road.
Eyewitness account told The Tide that the gridlock stretched from the Rumuokoro flyover to Rumuokuta junction.
It said that the situation led to the diversion of some vehicles to Rukpokwu through the SARS road.
An indigene of Rumuodomaya, Mr Gray Orji whose vehicle was trapped in the flood told The Tide that he spent more than three hours trying to navigate his way out of the community but to no avail owing to the heavy traffic caused by the flood.
Orji described the flood as very terrible, saying that something needed to be done to create access for water to flow out during heavy rains in the area.
“I feel that the drainage is not wide enough for water to flow out. Besides, some of the traders should also be blamed for always dumping refuse into the drainage”.
He urged the government to look into the drainage problem of the community as most residents are passing through difficulties as a result of perennial rainfalls and flooding.
Also speaking, a shop owner, Lady Lydia Tete said most shop owners usually lock up their shops during rainfalls.
“But today, Nkpolu done tie wrapper. I never see this kind of flooding before”, she said in pidgin English.
Lydia called on both the state and federal governments to come to the aid of Nkpolu residents by expanding the roads and widening the gutters.
“I dey call on government to help us build this road because we dey suffer too much on this road”, she said.
Another resident who spoke from the comfort of his home, said “every little rain fall here is a problem, let government come to our aid, we want government to do this road for us”.
The Tide correspondent who was also trapped in the incident reported that even officials of Setraco, the company working on the bad portion of Nkpolu road could not pass despite number of soilders that accompanied them.

By: John Bibor