PIND Charges N’Delta Stakeholders On Imminent Flooding

Following the predictions of the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMET) of possible flooding in the South South and other parts of the country, the Foundation for Partnership Initiative in Niger Delta (PIND) in collaboration with a United States based organisation, Fund For Peace, has urged stakeholders in the region to prepare ahead to mitigate the incoming disaster.

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, PIND, at the weekend, brought together development practitioners, civil society organisations and government representatives and charged them to leverage on the warning by NiMET and prepare ahead to tackle flooding in the Niger Delta.

The participants utilizing cutting-edge tools like 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 Program 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 multi-sectorial approach for preparedness for the response.”

On his part, the Vice President, Research and Innovation at Fund for Peace, Nate Haken, noted that the complex situations in the region, require deliberate simple solutions that will have great impact in reducing the sufferings and risks faced by the people.

Haken said, “In  Niger Delta, there are many complex problem. 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 analytics 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 and impacts that will reduce the sufferings  and the risk in the Niger Delta and even in the  country.

By: Ike Wigodo