The survivor, Covenant with his mother, Madam Favour Okon Effiong.
By Anietie Akpan
Sunday is the day most Christians set aside to worship God en-mass. It is also a day of relaxation and visitations. Children often use this day to play around after church services while looking ahead for the busy school week ahead.
But for the residents of Ekorinim 1, Sunday November 16, was a day of tragedy. A day of tears of sadness and tears of joy. Two boys amongst other children set off to play in the rain amid heavy flooding and tragedy struck. Suddenly two of them found themselves being swept away by the heavy flood through a 400 metre long gutter at about 5.30 pm in the evening. For an hour plus, heavy rain had hit Ekorinim 1 community flooding most areas.
But by stroke of luck and divine intervention, one of them, whose name was given as Covenant, was rescued by a brave Samaritan, Mr. Abam Usang Bassey while the other boy, Mathias could not make it.
Since the unfortunate incident, many have speculated reasons for the incident. A section attributed it to negligence on the part of the parents, some blamed the government for ignoring Ekorinim, some say it was just a natural occurrence while others say it was spiritual.
However, for the family of Covenant, it was joy while it was sadness for the other.
An eyewitness account said the two boys with the other children were playing in the rain besides a heavily flooded drainage area.
The eye witness said, “the children were taking turns from they were playing football,,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, thrilled with excitement took their turn but they were not that lucky as the water current emptied them into the main gutter and dragged them along. There was pandemonium. Young men and women who were attracted by the whirling ran by the side of the gutter in a desperate rescue effort. It was a sad day”.
Giving an account of his rescue effort, Bassey who is popularly known as Apostle Paul, said, “there was an incident that occurred last Sunday and two boys were lost inside the drainage and because of the water current, they could not save themselves.
“But all of a sudden, some guys met me and said that two children fell inside the drainage and the water has carried them away. I said, okay, they should take me to the place where the incident occurred.
The local drainage the children took turns to swim when it was flooded near the open space they were playing football in Ekorinim.
“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”.
He stated that the dead boy was covered by plantain leaves and inside the drainage and a section of that drainage is covered with concrete slab and he was stuck inside. I entered and struggled until I carried the dead boy out. The people around rushed him to the hospital but on getting to the there, it was confirmed that the boy had already passed out. He was about five years old.
On how he got to suspect that these children could be around there or around there, Bassey who runs a barbershop along Peterson Street said, when the incident happened, I saw some guys with some ladies crying down the street. And I asked them, what was going on? They said some children fell inside the gutter during the heavy rain.
“As a human being, when you see something like that, you needed to go there to see if you can do your own part to rescue them. I know how to swim and I told them that they should direct me to the place”.
Bassey said that the first place he went to when it happened was the pipeline area and “I went there, I swam, but discovered nothing and I told them they should take me to where the incident occurred.
“That was when I jumped inside the heavily flooded gutter and I started swimming. The water current was not easy. The water was waving me when I was swimming inside, because I was swimming against the current. Suddenly I discovered the boy that survived just few metres away from the culvert that crosses Peterson Street from the Ekorinim 1 community and I brought him out alive and people around screamed with joy.
“We then searched for about one hour before we discovered the second boy. My spirit was telling me what to do and where to search but there were lots of arguments from the crowd. They were arguing that the other boy, water has swept him away into the swamp and when the rain subsided, we should go there and check. I told them no. If water wants to carry someone, the water will not carry you directly like that.
The water will be waving you. When you have luck, maybe the water will now hang you someone. I said, let me trace it. They were arguing. They were even telling me that I should not enter inside, that the water is bad but I said, no, let me enter inside.
“I entered inside and I started swimming inside the gutter and about three stems of plantain trunks and leaves covered him. I just opened the plantain and saw the boy inside. Immediately he was rushed to the hospital but he didn’t make it”.
Bassey advised parents to always control their children. “They should not say that they are on their own. Because when you train your child in a good way, you will enjoy him when you are old”, he said.
The plantain trunk the children used as a raft before the heavy flood emptied them into the concrete gutter in front.
“I have discovered that some children here don’t have parental control. You will be seeing them walking, picking all these iron condemned, selling to abkoi (Hausa boys that buy condemned metals). There is no control”.
He also appealed to the state government and the Nigeria Delta Department Commission (NDDC) to look into the state of roads and drainages in Ekorinim 1 community.
“Government should come and help us. Because the roads here are not good. They should come and help us and do it”.
The mother of the survivor, Madam Favour Okon Effiong, was full of praises to God and Bassey for keeping her son alive and for the rescue.
For her, God has given her son the second chance because five years ago, she said her son was almost drowned by flood in same area.
Flashing back memory lane, she said five years ago her son was sitting outside with another boy and suddenly she did not find him and the boy again. Driven by instinct from God, Madam Effiong said, “I abandoned what I was doing and searched round in the compound only to discover him and the other boy just by the gutter despite the fact that I told him to sit down in one place while I was fetching water. But the friend, he was sitting down with, took him behind to that same compound the Sunday incident happened. He told me he wanted to get his shoe from the gutter.
“I threw the cane I was carrying and jumped into the gutter with the big water and carried him and the other boy back to the house.
“Since then my son never went near the gutter again. Now he is nine years and I was shocked when they told me that Covenant fell inside the gutter. Who carried him? Again he followed his friend.
The gutter in Peterson street, where Mathias was rescued.
“Even one old woman in the area said, she never saw him play in the rain even though other children used to play there, but she never saw my son played there when it rained. He used to play football, but in times of rain, he never went there. That was my shock”.
In tears, Madam Effiong said, “I give thanks to God, because the name Covenant, I am not the one that gave him that name, it is God. When I was pregnant, my pastor told me, this boy’s name, God gave him God’s Cvenant and that I should call him that name both in the house and in school. I should not change the boy’s name.
“I also kept to that covenant that I should call him God’s covenant. So that is his name, God’s Covenant. That was in Solid People’s International School in Ekorinim. He was delivered there and he was schooling there but now he is in JSS1 in Technical College in Ekorinim”.
In tears, Madam Effiong who is a single mother lamented, “Covenant’s father left me when I was pregnant of him. I was alone, struggling alone”.
She was full of praises for Bassey and others who helped in the rescue of her son saying, “God should bless him. May God Almighty bless him. Because he is just like my brother to me. It is God that sent him to enter there and helped my child and helped other children. I say God Almighty will bless him”.
“I always pray in the morning and in the evening for my son that wherever this boy will go and play, send destiny helpers his way and protect him because when I see this boy, I see there is no help.
“I always pray for God to protect me. He should not allow me to have a second dead child because I lost my first child. So I say God should not allow me to shed tears again.
“And God also has granted my prayers, showed me mercy and see me through with this boy and give this boy a second chance of life. I say may God bless this brother. May God Almighty bless him and open doors for him. As he is looking for a job, I say God should give me a good job. Amen”.
Madam Effiong who is a petty trader, equally appealed to government to come and work roads and drainages in Ekorinim. “The gutters and the roads look so terrible. When the rain falls, you cannot move from this place until rain stops before you can move. If you move anyhow, the water will carry you”.
Covenant, from Ibesikpo in Ibesikpo Asutan LGA of Akwa Ibom state, who sustained some injuries as the flood swept him through the gutters, looked weak and clung to the mother throughout the interview session with Pillar Today.
Mr. Abam Usang Bassey (Apostle Paul), the young man who rescued Covenant and retrieved the body of Mathias from the November 16 flood.
Commenting on the incident, a community leader in Ekorinim, Elder Ene Okon, said what happened was a temptation because such thing cannot happen when the mother of a child is around.
Okon said, “I call it temptation because if the mother was around, such a child of five years, cannot move from the house to that kind of position in the rain. She left him (Mathias) on Friday with his senior brother, who is 11 years, and left for a marriage ceremony”.
Under normal circumstances, Okon said, the mother of the deceased boy supposed “to have carried that boy along, but she left him and the elder one behind. Who are you keeping these children for? Nobody. It was the mistake of the mother to have left the children behind”.
Okon who is an indigene of Ekorinim, lives in the neighborhood and he said, the heavy flood passed in front of his house and the children were playing football in an open space behind his house.
“In that rain, I was making a very loud noise calling the children to leave but the children did not even obey me and not too long I heard a loud noise and I thought it was the usual noise from the children when they play football only to hear that the flood had swept away the children”.
On whether he suspected any spiritual link to the incident, Okon said “yes I suspect some spiritual thing in the boy’s death. It is not ordinary. Why I suspect spiritual something is that the level of flood was high and even me I was afraid but the children were not afraid. The children that were jumping all over the place and were not afraid. For me, I was afraid. That is why I say it is a spiritual and not just ordinary”.
What message he has for the members of his community and the government, Okon who used to be a star footballer with the now defunct Mobil Pegasus FC of Eket, said people should take care of their family.
“Any mother that has a child, should take care of the child. You should not allow the child to move wayward in the community. What has happened is a lesson to everyone”, Ene stated adding, “now, you look at this Ekorinim, you don’t have good streets with drainage.
“This is an ancient community in Calabar Municipality and because of our low standards nobody wants to help us except the community comes together to do communal work. We are appealing to the state government led by our amireable Governor Bassey Otu and the NDDC to come to our rescue and help do our roads and drainages for we have suffered for years”.
The parents of the deceased could not be reached for comments as they had taken the corpse of Mathias for burial in their village at Ito in Odukpani Local Government Area (LGA) of Cross River state and as at the time of this report they had not come back.
