The single sharpest fact in one or two punchy sentences. Who did what, where, when, and why it matters. Not a summary of everything — the one thing that makes someone stop scrolling. A reader who only reads this paragraph must understand what happened. Calabar, the Cross River State capital, has been inundated with torrential rains since the first week of July, leaving at least 10 people dead and over 1,000 residents displaced. The floods have swept through the city, destroying properties worth millions and leaving residents trapped indoors.

And for weeks, the rain has not stopped, with the city experiencing landslides in virtually all parts of the city. The first landslide was at Ikot Anwatim in the northern part of the city, where some buildings caved into a gully, killing five people. A family lost four children, and another family saw a father buried in the mud while trying to salvage his children from being swept away by the landslide.

Some were swept away by fierce floods, including a one-year-old baby who was washed away in the Otop Abasi area. The baby's mother desperately searched for her child but was unable to find her. Around Idim Otop, a landslide pulled down a house, trapping two girls who were eventually pulled out dead from the mud.

The state government has called for urgent intervention by the Federal Government to avert what it called "an impending ecological disaster". The Deputy Governor, Dr. Peter Odey, said the disasters are a grim reminder of the environmental vulnerability the state is facing and appealed for urgent help.

Conservationists attribute the high rainfall and attendant flooding to the relentless deforestation, which has left the entire landscape bare and void of any canopy to protect the atmosphere. Last week, the Conservator General of Nigeria National Park Service, Dr. Ibrahim Goni, disclosed that 14,000 hectares of Cross River tropical rainforest was destroyed through relentless logging, illegal mining, and uncontrolled agricultural activities in 2025.

Speaking in Calabar during a conference on conservation, Goni stated that "We are all witnesses to the devastating floods that are taking place in Calabar and more of such flooding is on its way. The cause of the flooding is deforestation, which is driving rapid climate change, and the solution to these frequent disasters is for us to sit and re-examine our actions and inactions, activities and practices and discover where we are going wrong and retrace our steps immediately".

The state government has directed the Commissioner for Works to mobilise immediately to the site to secure the area, prevent further destruction, and protect lives and property. Officials from the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) have already visited the scene, and close collaboration between the state and Federal Government will be indispensable in tackling the crisis.

The relentless deforestation has been attributed to the increasing population and economic activities in the state, which has put immense pressure on the ecosystem. The government has called for urgent action to restore the degraded ecosystem and mitigate the effects of climate change.

The state has also called for international support to mitigate the effects of climate change and help restore the degraded ecosystem. The government has pledged to work with international partners to address the issue of deforestation and climate change