Travelling to Igbokenyi is quite an ordeal. From Onitsha, Anambra State, you board a boat to Illah in Delta State, from where you trek to the neglected Igala-speaking, rustic community. But NWANOSIKE ONU reports that things may have started to change

Their only road to the outside world is a narrow path, flooded in the rainy season and overgrown in the hot period. On it, residents of Igbokenyi in Anambra West Local Government Area of the state march to Illah in Delta State where they board a boat on the bank of River Niger. At the end of their trip outside, they march back on the same path to their rustic community of perhaps over 100,000 people.

Their resilience is as remarkable as their peculiarities. They speak Igala language of Kogi State, with whom they have a boundary. But they are in Anambra, though quartered on the Delta end of the Niger, and speak smattering Igbo.

There is a primary school in Igbokenyi but there is hardly anything else bearing a modern mark, except perhaps the clothes the people wear. No paved road. No secondary school. No hospital. And no fond memories from any government of any stripe.

Their mud shelters are hardly better than what their forebears bequeathed to them. It is rare to see any fair-skinned person, the reason for which is hard to see.

The people know what suffering is like. The only thing they say they do not know is why they are where they are, and why no one seems to care whether they live or die.

They have no pipe-borne water, and perhaps count themselves lucky to, at least, have the great Niger to draw from and wash in.

The visitor to Igbokenyi gets to Illah first, by boat from Onitsha, Anambra State, or Asaba, Delta State. From Illah, you walk, as the residents do, on that bush path, to Igbokenyi. It is not the pleasant of journeys, but that is the lot of the residents, and the visitor must also put up with it.

The people are in agony. All they have is mud houses like in the ancient times.

The only source of making ends meet in the area is farming.

Even their farm products are always difficult to transport outside the area because of lack of transportation means, except through the River to the cities.

But during one of his tours to some churches round the state months back, a philanthropist in the state from Umuchu community, Mr. Godwin Ezeemo, who wept seeing such backwardness, told the Anglican Church in the area that he would provide boats to ease their transportation problems.

anambrariansnews realised that a prospective visitor to the forgotten community would move to Illah in Delta from Onitsha in Anambra state, before embarking on another stressful boat journey to Igbokenyi.

The 150 high-capacity engine boats worth one million naira donated to St. Mary’s Anglican Church in Mbamili Diocese by Ezeemo, had given hope to the hopeless.

One of the inhabitants in the area, Mrs. Rose Oguno, told our reporter that Anambra government past and present does not know that Igbokenyi exists.

She said, “We have plenty and assorted foods here, but there is no means of transporting them to anywhere; this can best describe the situation we have found ourselves in this area”

Also, for Prince Igene Osaji, the community is an abandoned one and according to him, they had taken their fate in their own hands adding “we did not create ourselves; neither did we put ourselves in Anambra State”

Osaji said, “The people in this community need help, we are suffering, it is a kind of one eating one’s flesh, we are in pain because nobody cares for us”.

“At least these boats will not only be used by the church, the people of the community will equally benefit because we live for one another in this area and do things in common”

Fidelia Atu, who is one of the big farmers in the place, told the Nation that what they were doing in Igbokenyi was suffering and smiling.

“As a result, we have decided to keep to ourselves because there is no amount of cry that will make the government of Anambra state visit us here, we believe that the government sees us as people without future and hope”

“But they are not God, we are still living and multiplying and we believe God that one day, we are going to meet a savior in this area like this man who has donated the 150 boats to the church”

“If we have people like him who visit this place, then we will have the feeling that we belong to the society, we thank Ezeemo for his benevolence and only God can reward him,” Atu said.

Though, he did not go to the community again to deliver the 150 boats, but when the Nation contacted Ezeemo on phone, he said he was touched on the level of neglect suffered by the people of Igbokenyi over the years.

He told The Nation that he visited the community in March, 2015 and was amazed by poor transportation system experienced by the people and wondered if government had not been informed about their plight.

According to Ezeemo, “we have to travel through Ellah in Delta state to come to this place and half way drive, we trekked and entered a boat with our hearts struck to our mouth”

“It is unbelievable that such a place still exist in the state ,the development going on in the state should be extended to this area, what is governance if the people at the grass roots cannot feel it, or abandoned and neglected from their normal ancient experience to modernity”

Ezeemo, further said that poor transportation system experienced by the community, no doubt, had hindered their efforts in show casing their various agricultural endowment.

He therefore, called on the state government and other wealthy individuals in Anambra state to join hands in giving lasting meaning to the existence of the people of the community through provision of essential amenities.

While receiving the boats, the Anglican Bishop of Mbamili Diocese, Most Rev Henry Okeke, accompanied by his wife Julie and other priests, said that the boats were fulfillment of a promise by Ezeemo.

He said that the donor had become a willing instrument used by God to bring succor not only to the church, but to humanity.

Okeke, urged God to continue to shower His blessings and protection on Ezeemo’s family, adding that he had alleviated the sufferings being encountered by the church in Igbokenyi community and its people.

Speaking with the Nation, the parish priest of St. Mary’s Anglican Church, Igbokenyi, Rev Victor Ogbalu, said not only the church but the entire community were in a frenzing over the donation.

He said Ezeemo had given the people hope that their end had not come, describing this as a great gift to the church and humanity.