Flooding and echoes of Lagdo

 Natural disasters are what they are: natural disasters. That is, they are mishaps caused by forces of nature beyond the remit of man to control. The best man can do is mitigate the effects through response strategies – first, to minimise the incident impact; and then, to recover in its aftermath. But some natural disasters are facilitated more by human failings than sheer tyranny of elemental forces. The floods currently ravaging many areas of Nigeria are of this kind.

More than 600 persons are confirmed dead and nearly two million displaced in the flooding that has overwhelmed 33 of Nigeria’s 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). Houses and farmlands have been submerged or washed away in Abia, Adamawa, Anambra, Bayelsa, Bauchi, Benue, Borno, Delta, Ebonyi, Edo, Gombe, Imo, Jigawa, Kano, Kebbi, Kogi, Niger, Plateau, Sokoto, Yobe, Taraba and Zamfara states as well as the FCT, among others. Government lately put on record that more than 2.5million persons were affected nationwide as of 16th October. “The number of houses that are partially damaged is 121,318; the number of houses that are damaged is 82,053; farmlands that are partially damaged, are 108,392 hectares, while damaged farmlands are 332,327 hectares,” Humanitarian Affairs Minister Sadiya Farouq told journalists in Abuja.

Unlike statistics that are cold, though, the toll of the flooding on lives, public health, property and economic routines has been pulsatingly ruinous. In Anambra, more than 70 persons died when they were fleeing dangerously high waters that submerged their community in a boat which capsized. After that, a whole family of six in same state was swept away. In Kogi, no fewer than six people, among them a toddler, were reported killed in the worst-hit council area, Ibaji, that State Governor Yahaya Bello confirmed was “100 percent under water.” Even the state capital and environs have been overwhelmed by floods, such that the major artery through Lokoja that connects the northern and southern parts of this country is cut off. This has left the FCT and other northern areas in throes of fuel scarcity, because tanker-trucks hauling products – which are mainly imported – from coastal areas down south can’t go through, and alternative routes available are not easily accessible. Lives have also been lost to flooding in Bayelsa, Benue, Delta, Jigawa, Lagos and Rivers states to mention only a few. In Bayelsa where more than 300 communities are submerged and some 700,000 persons displaced, the floods have reportedly washed out graves in a government cemetery, which apparently was the one noticed and only God knows how many more had gone unnoticed or unreported. This has raised fears of pollution of the ground water with all associated health risks.

At the press conference she addressed penultimate Sunday, Humanitarian Affairs Minister Farouq recalled efforts made by her ministry to sensitise state and council administrations to the need for proactive measures that could have mitigated the effects of this year’s heavy rainfall, lamenting that “despite all these efforts, we still appear to have become overwhelmed by the flood when it came.” She outlined fresh initiatives to get stakeholders, especially state governments, council administrations and community leaders to act up in mitigating the effects of the floods. Among her submissions, the minister noted that excess water released by Cameroonian authorities from the country’s Lagdo dam compounded the flooding in Nigeria. Hence, she said her ministry would initiate bilateral talks with the Cameroonians in November on the periodic opening of Lagdo dam: “The delegation to Cameroon is to be led by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry (Humanitarian Affairs), and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will be requested to facilitate the meeting.”

“When they say Nigerians get early warning to relocate ahead of flooding, you ask: where to, and for how long?”

On its part, the Presidency, while condoling with victims of the flooding, identified where the blame for the disaster should lie. It fingered persons who failed to comply with town planning regulations by building on drainage channels, citizens’ disregard of early warnings by the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), and the global effects of climate change. And the Presidency is right to some extent. Many Nigerians are crassly indifferent to environmental rules in the manner we dispose our waste and erect structures, such that we leave drainages clogged up and water channels obstructed. Meanwhile, it is nature’s law that when water’s rightful path is obstructed, water will invariably find new paths that might be hazardous to society. Besides, it is true that climate change induced by the affront on nature that human activities globally constitute hasn’t helped matters. Actually, those who are guiltier of this affront do not always bear the brunt as crushingly as outliers. That was why Pakistani Premier Muhammad Sharif, while briefing the 77th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in September on the unprecedented floods that submerged huge swathes of his country last June and left nearly 1,500 persons dead, said his people suffered heavily for what they had not caused. In other words, it is the activities of the world’s industrial powers that eroded the ozone layer of nature and caused global warming, which accounts for climate change. But these same powers have managed to insulate themselves from devastating effects of climate change with the fruits of their industrialisation, leaving non-industrial nations to face the fury of nature without as much insulation. Such is the injustice of climate change countries like Nigeria must contend with.   

That, however, is not to downplay the imperative of leadership responsibility in-country for restraining the flooding and mitigating its impact on Nigerians. There had been reports that successive Nigerian governments over the years failed to fulfil this country’s part in an agreement with Cameroon to build a counterpart dam that would take in water from Lagdo whenever Cameroonian authorities open that dam. But Minister of Water Resources Suleiman Adamu, last week, denied there was any such pact. Speaking while appearing for budget defense before Senate committee on water resources in Abuja, he said there was no record of such agreement; but that while the Nigerian government was in the process of building a dam to mitigate flood water from Cameroon’s Lagdo, there were engineering concerns. He also acknowledged – perhaps unwittingly, though – that Nigerian terrains aren’t protected from waters overflowing from inland rivers. “Datsin Hausa along with Kashimbila and the entire tributaries of River Benue have not been dammed, and that is why River Benue constitutes the major source of flood from the confluence downwards,” he said. Pertaining to Lagdo, the minister said Cameroon did not inform Nigeria about the release of water from the dam until 24 hours after-the-fact. But he made little of the factor of Lagdo water in Nigerian flooding: “The contribution of Lagdo dam to flooding in Nigeria is one percent. It is not the main reason we have flooding. The transboundary waters that come into this country from Rivers Niger and Benue constitute 20 percent of freshwater that flows into the country. Eighty percent of the flood in this country is water that we are blessed with from God from the sky.”

Without realising it, perhaps, Adamu confirmed leadership failure over time – not just with the Buhari presidency – that accounts for disastrous flooding in this country. It is sheer scandal that Nigerian leaders did not have the foresight to enter a pact with Cameroon over a dam that releases water into Nigeria, and with enough impact to warrant hurried bilateral talks now being sought. But that is by the way. Inland bodies of water in this country are neither dammed nor protectively embarked, and when water from wherever (including the sky) feeds them, they run wild over the banks and flush out adjoining communities and farmlands. Even NEMA acknowledged this tendency in a statement it issued on 19th September to warn that Lagdo water would compound Nigeria’s already disastrous flooding. “We are aware that the released water cascades down to Nigeria through River Benue and its tributaries, thereby inundating communities that have already been impacted by heavy precipitation. The released water complicates the situation further downstream as Nigeria’s inland reservoirs…are also expected to overflow between now and October ending,” the agency warned.

When they say Nigerians get early warning to relocate ahead of flooding, you ask: where to, and for how long? Of course, citizens who violate environmental rules deserve harsh censure; but it isn’t like Nigerian leaders over the years have risen to the responsibility of preemptive protection of the country’s terrains.