King Perekule Road Residents Raise Alarm Over Flooding, Blame Drainage Blockages on Shell, Julius Berger

Residents of King Perekule Road in Bonny, Rivers State, popularly known as New Road, have raised alarm over the flooding situation in their vicinity which has displaced some of them and affected their businesses.

In separate interviews with Kristina Reports at their various residences on Saturday, July 5, 2025, they lamented that they are not able to sleep, cook, or go about their daily activities due to the flood waters.

They also counted their losses in terms of damaged household appliances, lack of access to their business places and danger posed by reptiles roaming around in the flood waters.

One resident, Adda Allison told Kristina Reports that a black snake was killed while trying to climb over his fence into his compound while a python was killed in the residence of one of his neighbours.

“I have not gone out of my house for days now and that has cost me millions of Naira as I could not go and do my business. My family have been stranded as well and my dog’s kernel and generator house are both submerged in water.”

Another resident, Tari Jumbo said he almost got electrocuted when the flood waters entered his house and submerged his electrical socket, while his wife and daughter have had to starve as no way to go get food stuffs and baby food with everywhere flooded.

He also lamented the damage to his musical equipment and household appliances, calling on the authorities to come to their aid.

“This problem started long ago when we observed that Shell had closed the culverts, they built to evacuate water from our side of their fence. When we met them, they claimed scavengers were passing through the culverts to trespass into their facility.”

“To make matters worse, they now built a road on top of the culverts effectively shutting down any hopes of opening them up. Water passing under the culverts flow out through a canal to the Shell slot by NLNG jetty.”   

Also, speaking, a landlord, Minaopunye Green lamented how he lost equipment worth millions of Naira to the flood, blaming Shell and Julius Berger for creating an avoidable situation, stressing that even his tenants cannot access their business places.

“I don’t know what they are going to do but whatever they are going to do, let them do it quickly because the situation is getting out of hand. Things are being damaged and people are losing their means of livelihoods.”

Checks by Kristina Reports indicate rising water levels around the area from United Bank for Africa (UBA) Bonny Branch to First Bank Bonny Branch, which compound is flooded, down to Willbros junction where several buildings have been submerged in water with the owners displaced.

The flood waters generated by the continuous rainfall of the past ten days and in the preceding weeks generally remained stagnant with nowhere to evacuate to and the volume rising.

Residents told Kristina Reports that the stagnation was due to lack of evacuation channels on both sides; the Bonny Oil and Gas Terminal axis and the King Perekule Road.

According to them the situation became aggravated due to the blockage of five culverts reportedly built by Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) but later blocked reportedly to deny trespassers access into the BOGT.

On the other hand, the King Perekule Road, which is part of the Bodo-Bonny Road being constructed by Julius Berger Nigeria Plc for the Federal Ministry of Works and the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Limited (NLNG), is slanted to drain water into that axis of the road.

Strangely, the Kristina Reports team observed that there was no provision for the drained water to flow back into the storm water drainage on the road. It was even observed that the storm water drainage is not evacuating as the water inside it was also stagnant.

In fact, precisely at Latitude 4.426909 and Longitude 7.176999 along the King Perekule Road, the Kristina Reports team observed that the culvert inserted by Julius Berger Plc there ostensibly to drain water from one side to the other side of the road was blocked.

Some of the residents who spoke to Kristina Reports lamented that most of them were either grounded inside their houses or have been displaced due to their homes being submerged in water.

Worst hit were the business places along the road which were inaccessible to their owners and customers alike with many of them regretting the humongous revenues in millions of Naira and clientele they have lost to the flood.

The residents appealed to the federal, state and local governments, Shell, NLNG and Julius Berger to come to their, pleading for relief materials for those already displaced from their homes, as well as urgent intervention in opening up channels for the water to evacuate.  

Efforts by Kristina Reports to reach Shell and Julius Berger proved abortive as at the time of this report as none of their officials called or messaged responded yet.