Flood water emanating from heavy rainfall has displaced students of Government Technical College (GTC), Abakaliki, Ebonyi State.
Principal of the school Rev Fr Godfrey Ozogene who conducted newsmen round the place at the weekend said he noticed the problem around 3:00am of Saturday, but before then, his residence, the administrative block and the school rice farm had been submerged.
With this ugly development, many documents, books and other school materials as well as crops in the school farm, were destroyed.
The principal said that they had experienced similar situations before now but they were not as severe as the present incident. He attributed the perennial incident to improper channelization of flooding in the area.
“Since I came here, we usually experience substantial disturbance in every rainfall but not to this magnitude, we are not always free but as I said earlier, this is the highest of it,” he said.
He thanked God that none of his students and staff sustained injury in the cause of avoiding the flood and called for government’s intervention for the safety of lives and property.
The priest who suggested the construction of big drainage system there to forestall future occurrences disclosed that many of the documents and other items would be kept outside the structures pending when the various offices would dry.
He frowned at the alleged neglect of the school by successive governments over the years, stressing that many of the school structures were in sorry state.
Fr Ozogene lamented that in spite of the fact that the school had produced many prominent persons in the society yet no one could boast of it due to its poor condition together with the obsolete learning implements therein.
“The roofs are gone, everything is gone and I am posted here to function as what, the school is about sixty years and still no one can be proud of it including some persons who are occupying so many offices in the society,” he stated.
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