Worried by the near overflooding of Port Harcourt by heavy rains, the Rivers State Government on Thursday ordered the demolition of houses erected on flood channels.
Heavy rains had on Sunday prevented no fewer than five churches on Liberation Stadium Road from holding their normal services while many houses in the D-Line area of the state were also washed away.
In July, heavy rains had washed away a part of the ever-busy Aba-Port Harcourt Expressway, disrupting traffic in the process for about two days.
Apparently upset by the development, the state government said on Thursday that it would pull down all structures obstructing drainage in the town, irrespective of the status of their owners.
The state Commissioner for Budget, Mr. Mike Ejims-Enwukwe, said that the decision to pull down the illegal structures had been approved by the state executive council, which met last Wednesday.
Enwukwe said that other remedial actions would also be taken to address the problem which was posing a serious threat to residents of the state capital.
Enwukwe confirmed that the state was not satisfied with the number of projects said to have been executed by the Niger Delta Development Commission in the state and had directed that a committee be raised to verify such projects and report back to the council.
The state Governor, Dr. Peter Odili, had on Wednesday taken up the NDDC on the number of projects it claimed to have executed in the state since its inception about five years ago.
Odili, who made the call when he received the chairman of the National Economic Intelligence Committee in his office, said the state needed to verify the claim to know if it was in line with what the commission had actually done in the state.