Ten people have died in Calabar over the past month as torrential rains triggered landslides and floods across the Cross River State capital, destroying homes and cutting off a key access road to federal facilities including the Nigerian Navy.
The rains, which began in the first week of July, have left streets waterlogged, shut schools, and crippled commercial and social activity in the city.
The worst incident struck Ikot Anwatim in northern Calabar, where a landslide caved buildings into a gully and killed five people, including four children from one family. A father died trying to pull his children from the mud as floodwaters swept them away.
Elsewhere, a man drowned in floods along Elijah Hensaw Street, a woman lost her one-year-old son to the floodwaters on Webber Street, and two children drowned at Otop Abasi. In Boropit, near Idim Otop, a landslide buried a house and killed two girls trapped inside.
The most recent disaster hit Diamond Hill, near the former Unicem headquarters, where several houses were swept into the sea, leaving a gaping crater and a damaged road that leads to the Naval Base and Calabar Jetty.
Conservationists link the flooding to deforestation that has stripped the region of its tree cover. The Conservator General of the National Park Service, Dr Ibrahim Goni, said last week that Cross River lost 14,000 hectares of rainforest in 2025 to logging, illegal mining and unchecked farming, warning that the destruction is driving the floods and worse is likely to come.
Cross River State Deputy Governor, Dr Peter Odey, visited the Diamond Hill site and appealed to the Federal Government for urgent technical and ecological support, warning that the scale of destruction has overwhelmed the state’s capacity and that Calabar risks eventual submersion.
Odey said the Commissioner for Works has been directed to mobilise to the site immediately, and confirmed that fourteen directors from the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) are already in the state and have inspected the location.
“This is a challenge that requires genuine collaboration between the Cross River State Government and the Federal Government. It is beyond what any single institution can effectively handle,” Odey said.
He said the Diamond Hill landslide was one of several disasters recorded across the state in recent weeks, and that the Governor Bassey Otu administration is committed to responding to every affected community.
No lives were lost in the Diamond Hill incident, Odey said, but he warned the state cannot continue relying on luck and must act before more lives are lost.
He noted that the Federal Government had flagged Cross River as environmentally vulnerable during an earlier hazard mapping exercise, and said the recent disasters have confirmed those warnings. He renewed his appeal for federal intervention, stressing that the affected corridor serves strategic federal installations, including the Navy, and that its loss would have implications beyond the state.
“We shall mobilise without delay, and we will continue to engage the Federal Government until lasting solutions are provided,” Odey said.
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