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PORT HARCOURT, 20 December 1999 (IRIN) - Professor Turner Isoun, a former vice chancellor of the University of Science and Technology in Rivers State, lives in Port Harcourt but for 17 years he has owned a weekend house in Odi, the fishing village in nearby Bayelsa State where he grew up.
However, when government troops were sent to Odi on 20-21 November to arrest youths who had kidnapped and killed 12 policemen during the previous two weeks, his house was one of many buildings that were damaged.
"My home has been completely destroyed," Isoun told IRIN. "The aluminium roof has melted and collapsed. The baths have melted. The doors and frames are ash and all my personal mementos are gone. It is clear that the house was set on fire and we think that mortar bombs and grenades were used."
Bayelsa's governor, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, told IRIN on Sunday that the military had caused extensive destruction in Odi, that some people had been killed and that the criminals had not yet been caught.
"There has been massive destruction of buildings in Odi," Chris Njoku, branch secretary of the Nigerian Red Cross for Rivers State, who also has responsibility for Odi, told IRIN on Saturday in Port Harcourt. "Only the health centre, the bank, the primary school and the church remain."
Isoun, who is also chairman of a committee which advises the Bayelsa government on issues affecting the state, considers himself lucky. "The tragedy is first those who lost their lives," Isoun said. "Second are the people who live permanently in Odi as they have nowhere else to go. There are old pensioners who worked for 30 or 40 years and whose houses have been burnt and they have no chance of rebuilding those houses."
Bayelsa is part of the troubled Niger Delta region in south-eastern Nigeria. Communities there have been complaining that they have benefited little from petroleum mining which, they say, has polluted their environment. In some cases, militant youths from these communities have occupied oil installations, kidnapped oil workers and, as in Odi, targeted state employees.
The Nigerian Red Cross, which has been working in Odi for the past two weeks, estimates that some 15,000 residents fled the town in the wake of the army's intervention but that increasing numbers had started to return in the past few days.
"As at Saturday we had 4,000 people registered for our relief assistance programme," Njoku said. "The majority of them are elderly. We do not know the whereabouts of the youth."
It is difficult to know where the other Odi residents are staying as the population is traditionally fluid. People often leave the town for days to harvest fish from ponds in the Niger Delta or to plant or reap crops. Others live and work in Port Harcourt and use the village as a weekend retreat.
"We can assume that those who have relatives in nearby villages or in Port Harcourt are staying with them," an Odi resident currently in Port Harcourt told IRIN. "Other able-bodied villagers probably walked or paddled in a canoe to one of their bush camps," the source added.
The Nigerian Red Cross says two most important humanitarian needs at the moment are shelter and food. "People in Odi are currently sleeping in the crevices of cracked buildings and makeshift shelters," Njoku said. "We intend to erect a transit camp so that they have somewhere to rest but we need roofing sheets and tents to do that. Permanent structures like warehouses to store relief supplies are also required," he added.
"There has not been much damage to existing farms as most people farm outside Odi," Miriam Isoun, director of the Niger Delta Wetlands Centre, an environmental NGO, told IRIN, "but the December to February period is the river bank planting season and much food, particularly water yam stocks which have been stored in Odi until the harvest, has been burned."
Villagers are dependent on water yams, a crop typical of the Niger Delta, for survival during this period, which is known as the "hungry season," she added.
Three 40-mt Nigerian Red Cross trucks carrying food and non-food items, including pots, pans, mats, blankets, cans, plates and water arrived in Odi on Thursday and these supplies are being distributed.
"This should provide for the immediate needs of 5,000 to 6,000 people for one week," Ofor Nwobodo, secretary-general of the Nigerian Red Cross (NRC), told IRIN on Wednesday in Lagos. He added that the NRC, which had received ICRC support for its intervention in Odi, was planning to send water tanks to Odi as soon as possible.
The health situation in Odi is stable, according to Rebecca Golden, MSF's Head of Mission for Nigeria. MSF has a team based in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State capital, which is about a 40-minute drive from Odi.
"When our medical team first arrived in Odi on the third of December we found some people suffering from trauma, stress and burns," Golden told IRIN on Saturday. "We did not find any war-wounded and we did not see anyone suffering from severe malnutrition or dehydration, which would be associated with people who had spent a long time in the bush," she added.
Golden said that MSF had treated some 400 people during the week ending 12 December but that it had started to phase down operations in favour of the Ministry of Health during the past week, even though drugs continued to be provided.
In interviews with Africa Independent Television, a privately owned Lagos television station which went to Odi on 18 December, Odi residents complained that they had received no relief assistance from the Bayelsa government, a charge Alamieyeseigha denied.
Alamieyeseigha told IRIN that he had not wanted to send any relief supplies to Odi immediately after the emergency because of the dead bodies lying round, because there was a lack of warehouse facilities, which could lead to food being misappropriated, and because he wanted to consult with Odi residents first.
He added that the federal government had sent some relief supplies to the state government, which had started to distribute them.
Asked whether the state government would help Odi residents to rebuild their homes, Alamieyeseigha said that an assessment of the damage needed to be made first.
"First of all we must do an enumeration of the number of properties that are damaged," he told IRIN. "The second stage is to value them and we wanted as a government a credible body, people with a high reputation, internationally, so that when they come out with a value of the properties that are destroyed there will be international acceptance without any question."
A committee has been established by local people to coordinate the distribution of contributions from people giving aid.
"People want to do something to help," Miriam Isoun, who acts as a focal point for Odi aid donations, told IRIN. "Even though people are financially strapped, particularly as it is Christmas, we have received some money, used clothes and food to ease the plight of the people in Odi."
One of the oil companies working in the Delta, has also provided help. "Agip has donated nine cows to the villagers of Odi," an Odi resident told IRIN in Port Harcourt. "There used to be ten but one has escaped."
[ENDS]
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Item: irin-english-2173
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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 1999
Subscriber: afriweb@sas.upenn.edu Keyword: IRIN
Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
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