Two youths drown in Aba sewage pit during evacuation

The victims, who were reportedly contracted by tenants of the building, had arrived at the premises with a ladder and buckets to manually evacuate the sewage when tragedy struck.

Two young men have died while evacuating sewage from an underground pit at a three-storey building in Aba, Abia State.

The incident occurred around midnight on Sunday at No. 10 Powerline, off Omuma Road, Aba.

The victims, who were reportedly contracted by tenants of the building, had arrived at the premises with a ladder and buckets to manually evacuate the sewage when tragedy struck.

According to reports, the ladder being used by the workers broke into two, causing both men to fall back into the underground pit, where they drowned.

Following the incident, officials of the Abia State Environmental Protection Agency (ASEPA), Aba Zone, sealed the building to facilitate investigation into the circumstances surrounding the deaths.

The Deputy General Manager of ASEPA, Aba Zone, Okezie Ezengwa, who confirmed the incident, expressed sadness over the deaths and blamed the tragedy on what he described as unsafe and improper sewage evacuation practices.

“We have been preaching against the use of these manual techniques in evacuating sewage,” Ezengwa said.

“There are approved vendors. Why will you use a ladder to climb into an underground pit and use buckets to scoop sewage and empty it into public drains?”

Meanwhile, the bodies of the victims have been recovered and deposited at a mortuary, while some tenants of the building were reportedly arrested by the police in connection with the incident.

ASEPA officials have kept the building sealed pending the completion of investigations.