Tragedy has struck Ekorinim 1, in Calabar Municipality, Cross River State as two children were swept away by a heavy flood through a 400 metre long gutter leaving one dead while the other survived.
An eyewitness account said the two boys with the other children were playing in the rain besides a heavily flooded drainage area but by stroke of luck and divine intervention, one of them, whose name was given as Covenant, was rescued while the other boy, Mathias, a five year old boy, could not make it.
The eye witness said, “the children were playing football on the faithful Sunday taking a jolly ride on a sliced plantain trunk that served as a raft for them in the flooded gutter.
The plantain trunk will ferry them (two at a time) on the fast moving water covering a distance of about 30 metres and they will quickly alight before the dangerous current will flush them into the main concrete drainage that runs from the Ekorinim 1 community into Peterson street and empties into the swamp forest by the pipeline”.
He said the two boys, Covenant and Mathias, were not that lucky as the water current emptied them into the main gutter and dragged them along resulting into pandemonium.
Young men and women who were attracted by the whirling ran by the side of the gutter in a desperate rescue effort and in the process one Mr.Bassey who is popularly known as Apostle Paul, was able to rescue one.
Bassey, while narrating the incident to newsmen in Calabar, recalled another incident that occurred the previous Sunday where two boys were lost inside the drainage and because of the water current, they could not save themselves.
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“So I went there and immediately jumped inside, I started swimming and I discovered that one was alive and I was able to pull him out alive but he sustained severe injuries and before I saw the second boy, he had died” Bassey, also explained.
He stated that the dead boy was covered by plantain leaves and inside the drainage while a section of that drainage was covered with concrete slab and he was stuck inside.
Bassey, further disclosed to newsmen in Calabar that he entered and struggled until he carried the dead boy out stating that the people around rushed him to the hospital but on getting to the there, it was confirmed that the boy had already passed out.
Since the unfortunate incident, many have speculated reasons for the incident and while a section attributed it to negligence on the part of the parents, some blamed the government for ignoring Ekorinim in development.
