Inside Akwa Ibom communities where sand excavation degrades environment
Illegal sand mining activities in Akwa Ibom State threatens its environmental sustainability.
5 min read
In 2015, when a group of armed cultists stormed the family farmland of Asi Emmanson to excavate sand, she could not bear the pain of seeing her only means of livelihood and family heritage in ruins.
Seventy-nine years at the time, she developed high blood pressure and died of a heart attack.
She was a promising smallholder farmer who grew palm plants on the farmland she inherited from her late husband, Emmanson Uwaidem.
“Nobody ever tampered with this palm plot right from my youth to when I became mature,” Mrs Uwaidem’s eldest son, Ismaila Uwaidem, who is also the deputy village head of Ikot Ekpuk, a village in the South-west of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State capital, said.