True to several warnings issued by the Nimet, Nigeria has witnessed massive flooding in different states of the federation.
Floods have reportedly displaced over 300,000 people and damaged thousands of buildings, affecting about one million people in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State alone.
Borno is not the only state in Nigeria hit by flood disaster this year. About eleven to fifteen states are affected one way or the other.
Heavy rainfall in recent weeks were said to have “caused the Alau Dam, located just a few kilometres outside Maiduguri, to collapse for a third time since 1994. There have been reported “unusually high levels of rainfall across West and Central Africa, which some experts link to climate change; this has affected more than four million people, from Liberia to Chad.”
In 2022, Nigeria reportedly lost more than 600 people and farmlands to the worst flooding in a decade following heavy rain and after Cameroon released water from a dam in that country.
The question is, given early warnings by Nimet, to the effect that many states would witness flooding, what steps did the federal and state governments in Nigeria take to safeguard lives and property of citizens before the recent flood disasters that ravaged many parts of the country?
This question becomes even more imperative in the light of the fact that flooding is gradually becoming a yearly occurrence in the Nigeria for a couple of years now.
Experts have been saying that Nigeria’s failure to complete a dam of its own that was supposed to backstop the Cameroonian one, is one reason that worsen the flood disasters in the country. Release of water from dams is becoming a yearly thing on the part of the Cameroonian government, which explains why Nigeria should prepare for the fallout.
It is shocking that successive administrations in the country appear not to have given heed to experts’ advice that a major reason for flooding when the Lagdo Dam releases water is the lack of a buffer dam in Nigeria to contain the excess flow.
For this reason therefore, the authorities in the country should go beyond mere provision of IDP camps and sharing of relief materials to flood victims, by ensuring that all expert advice on curbing the menace, including the construction of a buffer dam to contain excess flow of water released from Cameronian dams.
Again, the federal and state governments should without further delay, embark on dredging of all rivers especially, the Niger and Benue rivers, that are connected with flood disasters.
As much as it is necessary, people living in flood-prone areas should be relocated.
The government should do more in preventing flooding than sharing relief materials when the flood has already occurred.