The children, Aisha Umaru, 9; Yusuf Ibrahim, 6; and Fatima Ibrahim, 5; had barely left the kitchen after preparing their evening meals when the landslide occurred around 8pm.
The landlord of the affected house, Mr Francis Ikpe, described the landslide as devastating, adding that it was a miracle the children escaped.
“The three children were preparing their meals in the kitchen. It was not even up to five minutes after they left the place when the kitchen collapsed. They were eating when there was a bang and the kitchen and everything inside it got buried. They could have been trapped,” Ikpe said
The landlord said the community had been living with the erosion for the past 30 years, adding that the problem became serious when the state government decided to embark on street repairs and construction of drainage.
He said water from six adjoining streets was channelled to the place without a chamber constructed to receive the water.
The state Commissioner of Environment and Petroleum Resources, Mr Charles Udoh, who paid a visit to the site, said the government was making efforts to mitigate the impact of erosion in the state.
In a related development, a landslide led to the collapse of two houses on Trinity Street, Akwakuma, in the Owerri North Local Government Area of Imo State.
Our correspondent, who visited the scene on Monday, observed that 80 per cent of the residents had fled.
The Chairman of the works committee of the neighbourhood, Chigozie Nnanna, told PUNCH Metro that the landslide started in 2017.
He claimed that all letters to the state government on the matter were not attended to.
Nnanna said through individual efforts, the neighborhood expended millions of naira to remedy the situation.
He told our correspondent that apart from the two houses that collapsed, other houses were being threatened by the landslide.
The state Commissioner for the Environment, who spoke through his media aide, Bright Eluagu, said the government was worried by the incident.