The plight of the people of Issele-Mpitime

If you think your life is hard, consider the plight of the people of Issele-Mpitime in Delta State. Yes, government has long abandoned us to our fate in the area of potable water. However, while you can always help yourself by digging a well or sinking a borehole if you are rich, the people of this community are not so lucky. However hard they try, their borehole won’t strike water, ostensibly, owing to their topography.

If you are not a Dangote or government, you can’t muster the kind of funds required to get the heavy equipment to break the barrier. So, they came up with another solution you are looking at in these pictures. 

It looks like a well, but it’s not. It is an underground rain water collector. It’s their only means of getting water for household use. Rain water from the roof is funnelled into PVC pipes and connected to
the reservoir. The bigger your reservoir, the better your chances of having water all year round. If you are rich, you then put a pumping machine to get water into your overhead tanks for household use. For the poor folks, you draw the water with well buckets.

As for electricity, a resident said the community had not had light for years even though the town is electrified. Everyone has a generator.

As for security, there was none. Fulani herdsmen were gracing their cows on their farms and that resulted in several bloody skirmishes that cost them lives. Kidnappers wreaked their own havoc too. Life was becoming too brutish and callous until they were forced to form a security ‘force’ of their own. Now they have some measure of security through self-help. 

Their plight is emblematic of the failure of government in Nigeria. They provide their own water, generate their own power, maintain a self-help security arrangement. Yet, government does not exempt them from tax. Story of our life as Nigerians!