Addressing Cost Of Flood Devastation

Barely seven weeks after flood occasioned by heavy downpour devastated Nigeria’s fore-most commercial nerve centre, Lagos, and killed 25 people, Ibadan, another large city, has succumbed to the persistent pounding of a torrential rainfall.

The rainfall, which reportedly lasted for over six hours last weekend, left in its wake destruction of unimaginable and unpredictable proportion.

At the last count, 102 people were declared dead by rescue teams while several bridges, houses and roads either caved-in or were completely washed away. Hundreds of vehicles were also submerged, with hundreds of families displaced.

The devastation prompted President Goodluck Jonathan to visit the ravaged city on an assessment tour where he promised Federal Government’s intervention and assistance in the reconstruction efforts of the Oyo State Government.

It would be recalled that on June 22, 2011, Nigeria’s largest Northern city, Kano, also suffered similar fate, when an unusual heavy rain flooded a neighbourhood, leaving 24 people dead, dozens injured, 300 displaced and some 100 houses destroyed in Fagge.

Cross River State has also taken its turn in what now seems to be a flood disaster merry-go-round. When it struck in that state, scores of lives were also lost while property worth billions of naira were destroyed.

According to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), last year, alone, flooding affected around half a million  people in two thirds of the 36 states of the federation. Scores of people also lost their lives.

A recent statistics by the African Centre for Meteorological Application for Development (ACMAD) revealed that West Africa as a whole has witnessed increased flooding in recent years due mainly to climate change, with 22 million people affected in 2010 alone and more than 500 people killed.

With, at last, 118 deaths, according to ACMAD, Nigeria last year recorded the highest cases of flood-linked deaths followed by Ghana (52) and Benin Republic (43).

It is not unlikely that this year’s statistics will be more appalling for Nigeria with the number of deaths already recorded.

The situation not only calls for concern but urgent action. Though the South-West geo-political zone appears to have been caught napping, the zone realised well in advance that it is flood-prone due to its proximity to the coastal areas, and organised a roundtable consultative meeting in  October 2010, to address the problem.

The roundtable identified, among other things, indiscriminate property development along flood planes and dumping of refuse along waterways as major causes of flooding, and recommended effective monitoring of such activities in such areas. Yet not much was achieved before the last disaster struck.

On its part, NEMA, early this year, warned that the nation would witness greater rainfall which would result in huge floods.

Considering the extent of devastation already witnessed in some parts of the country, it is doubtful if the NEMA warning was taken seriously.

With more rains ahead, the likelihood of more flood appears inevitable, unless drastic measures are put in place to checkmate the possible devastation.

Governments, particularly those within the Niger Delta region and other flood planes across the country, must rise up to the challenge of opening up waterways through desilting of blocked drainages, especially in cities and construction of new ones.

They must also muster the political will to demolish structures built on waterways and sensitise the citizenry on the dangers of disposing refuse into waterways. We say so, because, the prevention of flooding should not be seen as government’s sole responsibility.

It is against  this backdrop that the decision of the Rivers State Government to replace open surface with sub-surface drainages in major areas of the city of Port Harcourt as well as demolition of structures built on waterways deserves special commendation and even emulation by other governments in flood-prone parts of the country.

However, while the construction and reconstruction of sub-surface drainages are still on, residents of the areas where open drainages are still in use must desist from converting them to refuse dumps.

The regular environmental sanitation exercise must be seen as an opportunity to ensure that such drainages are opened up for free flow of water at all times.

It is only by such collective effort that the nation can check the rising human and material cost of flood devastation.