Any lessons from the 2012 flood?

The managers of the Lagdo Dam in Cameroon recently informed the federal government that it will be releasing waters gradually from the dam to save it from collapsing. The information conveyed to Nigerians by National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and other ministries is already causing panic in states that were devastated in 2012 when the authorities of the same dam released water without first warning Nigeria of the consequences the water will have downstream.

In 2012 water was released from the dam and caused floods that were termed as the worst in 40 years. It affected 30 of the 36 states and an estimated 17 million people, killing 363 and displacing over 2.1 million people while the damages and losses caused by the floods were worth N2.6 trillion. To cushion the sufferings and loses, former President Goodluck Jonathan released N17.6 billion to various states and agencies for damage response, flood relief and rehabilitation.

President Goodluck Jonathan called the floods “a national disaster” and went ahead to set up the Presidential Flood Relief and Rehabilitation. Committee co-chaired by business mogul Aliko Dangote and Human Right Activist, Olisa Agbakoba (SAN).

The committee raised over N17 billion in both cash and pledge and winded up in 2014 without rehabilitating the victims of the floods.

The fund given to states by the federal government to address the flood was treated as another share from the national cake as evidence abound that there were all misapplied and no state was able to relocate those living around the flood plain.

The states ended up sharing between N2,000 and N3,500 to the victims while promises of relocating them were not kept. After the 2012 flood, the Nigerian Metrological Agency, NIMET said state governors were warned well ahead of the disaster but they failed to act.

Another flood has started and the way both the federal and states governments are going about it shows that we didn’t learn any lesson from what happened in 2012.

Information is not freely shared by various government agencies dealing with weather forecast. An alert system initiated by the federal ministry of environment providing weekly forecast of flood possibilities was jettisoned on the orders of the former Secretary to the Government of the Federation based on a complaint by NIMET.

The Nigeria Hydrological Service Agency had in its 2015 ‘’Annual Flood Outlook’’, predicted that 12 states in the country would witness huge flood during the year but those states were still caught unawares as the flood which began before the release of the waters from Lagdo had killed scores and destroyed homes, farms and properties.

The ministry of water resources was to ensure a buffer dam was built to cushion the impact of water release from Ladgo dam since 2012 but that has not happened.

Citizens have placed the problems of the flood squarely at the door steps of government forgetting their own responsibilities.

Recent statistics from the federal ministry of environment shows that residents’ action account for more than 60 per cent of why their localities are flooded. It has become common practice for residents to dump their refuse in drainages why houses are erected on water ways and in some areas the total absences of drainages ensure that such areas are flooded when it rained.

An emergency meeting of ministries and agency on the impending flood held recently recommended some steps that must be taken to reduce the impact of the flood we are envisaging and one worthy of mention is that the Dangote committee must be told to make its report public.

The issue at hand goes beyond just making their report public, what happened to the N17 billion it generated and an audit should be carried out to know what or how the states used the N17 billion flood assistance from the federal government.

States should step up efforts to enforce building codes and town planning regulations so that people will stop erecting buildings on flood plains and residents should also be educated on the consequences of dumping refuse on drainages.

Government should undertake a coordinated approach that will fix the flood challenge once and for all since climate change has become a phenomena that we can no longer deny.