As the rains set in the face of the warning of possible flooding in the South-South and other parts of the country, following predictions from the NIMET, the Foundation for Partnership Initiative in Niger Delta (PIND) in collaboration with a United States-based organisation, Fund For Peace, have started preparing stakeholders in the region on how to respond to flood challenges.
The organisation expressed concern on several complex problems in the region ranging from flooding to poverty, environmental issues, political crisis, among others.
To reduce the flooding challenges, the organisation at the weekend brought together development practitioners, civil society organisations, and government representatives to leverage advanced analytics for better flood preparedness in the Niger Delta.
The participants, utilizing cutting-edge tools such as the fragile states index, state resilience index, and crisis sensitivity simulator produced with the support of the organisations, identified key intervention points to maximize impact on humanitarian response, livelihoods, and peace.
The peace building programme Manager, PIND Foundation, David Udofia, expressed doubt on the level of preparedness of various states despite the NIMET warnings.
He condemned late responses to flooding, which he said, has had devastating impacts on the people.
Udofia said, “It costs so much to engage on mitigation so what we often look at is the preventive mechanism and by this project, we looked at the causes of flood and then adopted a multisectorial approach for preparedness for the response”.
On his part, the Vice President of Research and Innovation at Fund for Peace, Nate Haken, noted that the complex situations in the region, requires deliberate simple solutions that will have great impact in reducing the sufferings and risks faced by the the people.
Haken said, “In Niger Delta, there are many complex problems, we can talk about poverty, criminality, infrastructure, environmental pressure, tension, governance and everything, and so when you have a complex problem like this, you will never have enough resources to address every aspect of them, but with the analytic tools, we can get a simple solution”.
He noted that using analytics, data, tools as simplified to the participants at the training will bring simple solution to the complex problem.
He said, the project would bring solutions, impacts that will reduce the sufferings and the risk in the Niger Delta and even in the country.

Ike Wigodo