Why is Nigeria flooded?

BY CHRIS  ANYOKWU

Chris Anyokwu, PhD, a dramatist, poet, fiction writer, speaker, rights activist and public intellectual, is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Lagos, Nigeria and has joined Business a.m.’s growing list of informed editorial commentators to write on Politics & Society. He can be reached via comment@businessamlive.com

The chopper, the whish-whish of its engine quickening the heartbeat with fear and trembling, hovers over what appears like a sad-faced sea below, dotted irregularly with barely noticeable rooftops and vehicle tops and a farrago of odds-and-ends. The eye follows the rhythmical itinerary of the chopper as it surveys the wastes of water below, thereby mapping the rubrics of chaos and disaster wrought in the wake of nature’s boon gone awry.

This is what is left of the Confluence Town, the hitherto proud capital of Kogi State – Lokoja. In the beginning, at Genesis, when God expressed His righteous rage at humankind’s congenital refractoriness and its serial disobedience, He had unleashed the antediluvian flood on the earth, seeking to wipe it clean of human and animal impurities. He had spared just Noah and his household with a few birds and animals. But seeing the unprecedented devastation the flood had caused on earth, God had repented, or, better put, relented, His mounting fury ebbing accordingly and thus He promised not to visit the earth with an apocalyptic flood anymore. As James Baldwin puts it, following this divine dispensation, it’s The Fire Next Time. Hell fire, to be certain! But now, it does seem God has reneged on His word; it is not fire – now, it is water; FLOOD! “Water, water everywhere”, as Samuel Taylor Coleridge declaims in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Returning to our chopper which surveyed what was left of Lokoja and the outlying communities after a heavy downpour, we are reminded, inevitably, of Noah’s dove, sent in the aftermath of the forty-day-and-forty-night rain to see if the floodwater had abated. Like Noah’s dove, like Nigeria’s chopper! Sadly, Lokoja was just one instance of the hardest-hit locations of natural disaster. According to media reports, in September 2022, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency (NHISA) informed Nigerians that “the Lagdo Dam operators in the Republic of Cameroon had commenced the release of excess water from the reservoir on September 13, 2022”. What about this source of our common misery–Lagdo Dam? It is said that the construction of the Lagdo Dam, located in Northern Cameroon, started in 1977 and was completed in 1982. Whenever water is released from the Lagdo Dam, many communities in Nigeria along the course of River Niger and River Benue are always impacted adversely by floodwater. This floodwater has claimed many lives and destroyed property valued at billions of naira. It is important to add that Cameroon and Nigeria have a subsisting Memorandum of Understanding signed years ago, a legal document which commits Cameroon to, first of all, give Nigeria a heads-up before releasing excess water from its Lagdo Dam. Incredibly, Cameroon, for reasons best known to it, has always acted in bad faith. It has this time round opened the dam without informing Nigeria it’s about to do so. The result is the flood-related deaths and devastation across the length and breadth of Nigeria. Benue is counting its losses; so are Adamawa, Taraba, Anambra, Delta, Bayelsa and Rivers States. As a matter of fact, Lagos State authorities have already asked Lagosians to get ready to evacuate and relocate to firmer promontories of safety, given the fact that the coastal state itself is flood-prone. For instance, a meme trending on social media shows the Yenagoa-Amassoma highway leading to the Bayelsa Airport and the Niger Delta University, Amassoma completely cut off by raging floodwater. Now, the University and the Amassoma Community in Southern Ijaw Local Government Area have been cut off from Yenagoa. Several other equally spine-tingling scenes of devastation are trending on social media. Large swathes of land and road infrastructure in the south-eastern and south-south areas of Nigeria have been utterly destroyed by soil erosion. Many people now commute from place to place via motorised canoes, kayaks and speed-boats. On a personal note, a sister-in-law of mine sent me a video she made using her smartphone showing all their property completely submerged in floodwater in Anambra! Like her household, many Nigerian houses are battling untold hardships arising from this largely avoidable disaster.

Avoidable? Yes, please! Now, consider this: The Dasin Hausa Dam in Nigeria was supposed to be two and a half the size of the Lagdo Dam, which was built to supply electricity to the northern part of Cameroon and allow the irrigation of 15,000 hectares of crops downstream. Like the Lagdo Dam, the dam project sited at Dasin village in Fufore Local Government Area in Adamawa State was supposed to generate 300 megawatts of electricity and also irrigate about 15,000 hectares of land in the state, Taraba and Benue. But, sadly, since 1982, the Nigerian government has yet to complete the construction of the Dasin Hausa Dam. How much blame, then, can we apportion proactive and far-sighted Cameroon? As always, we leave the substance to pursue shadows. As we do with NIMET!

The Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET) is Nigeria’s official rain-maker. Established by an Act of the National Assembly, in 2003, NIMET is charged with observing and analysing timely and accurate reporting of weather and climate information for socio-economic development and safety of life and property. Unsurprisingly, it was reported in The Daily Post on October 12, 2022, that NIMET “warned Nigerians to prepare for more flooding”. Continuing, the report elucidated that NIMET’s Director General, Professor Mansur Bako Matazu “gave the warning in Abuja at a workshop on Hydro-meteorological status and outlook system (HydroSOS)”. This warning came on the heels of the rising death toll recorded in the aftermath of the devastating flooding experienced across the federation. Over 1.4 million people have been displaced, 500 died and thousands injured in floods in recent days. Prof. Matazu vouchsafed the following: “From the information we’re getting from NIHSA, we’re going to see more floods. The rain is now concentrating more on the North Central and the Southern states. So that will be a combination of short-duration, high-intensity rain, with riverine flooding. So we’re going to see more of these floods in the North Central states as we are seeing in Kogi and South Eastern and South Western states”. The Director General of NIMET also said that, apart from the excessive water being released from the Lagdo Dam in Cameroon, “Kainji and Shiroro dams were [also] released”. So, what we are witnessing today in our country, Nigeria, is riverine flooding. Or, put more clearly, the causes of flooding in Nigeria are rainfall and excess water released from dams, particularly the Lagdo Dam in Cameroon. However, the nagging worry remains, how come we are so incredibly negatively impacted by flooding? Why is Nigeria flooded? One expert has provided some answers to this poser: “poor, or non-existent drainage systems, poor waste management, unregulated urban expansion and the lax implementation of laws”. In a word, we suffer because, as in everything Nigerian, of the absence of leadership; no rule of law and, of course, utter lawlessness and impunity at different cadres of government. Looking at Nigeria today, you are reminded of Israel under the reign of the Judges. The Bible records that, in those days, everyone did what seemed right in their sight. Doesn’t that ring a bell? Can’t you draw parallels between Israel of old and today’s Nigeria where the people suffer from perennial absence of leadership? Must we always invoke Chinua Achebe’s immortal diatribe, namely: “The Trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely the failure of leadership”?

It has been said that global discourse in years to come will be dominated by migration and climate change. How is Nigeria responding to these hot-button issues, especially the climate crisis? Or do we suppose we are immune from it? According to an online report, “Climate Change can affect the intensity and frequency of precipitation. Warmer oceans increase the amount of water that evaporates into the air. When more moisture-laden air moves over land or converges into a storm system it can produce more intense precipitation – for example, heavier rain and snow storms – causing crop damage, soil erosion, and an increase in flood risk due to heavy rains – which in turn can lead to injuries, drownings, and other flooding-related effects on health.” Also runoff from precipitation can impair water quality as pollutants deposited on land wash into water bodies. Additionally, some of the effects of flooding include food insecurity as farmlands are washed away and farmers are prevented from accessing their farmsteads. This puts a strain on livelihoods, sparking, among the others, health risks and challenges. Experts have advised that floods due to rainfall can be controlled with proper planning and infrastructure. For example, disaster risk reduction and resilience specialist, Olasunkanmi Habeeb Okunola posits that a variety of factors make cities vulnerable. These include institutional failures, inadequate infrastructure and a lack of disaster education. Okunola avers also that there is need for government, non-governmental agencies, community-based organisations and residents to join forces and prepare for floods, to reduce their impact.

On his part, water management expert, Nelson Odume argues that flooding risks can be minimised in a welter of ways, not least, and, indeed, most importantly, coordinated spatial planning. This involves bringing urban planners and environmental practitioners together to organise the distribution of people and activities in a space. Odume, furthermore, outlines salient steps Nigeria needs to take to tackle this scourge. These steps include (a) installing gauging stations; (b) developing suitable models for hydrological predictions and (c) collecting data that will enable accurate flood forecasting. Briefly, there is need for proper coordination and synchronising of multi-level disaster response and management. Thus, there is absolutely no room for inter-agency finger-pointing, buck-passing or grandstanding. All hands must be on deck and no effort must be spared in our concerted effort to stem this vile tide. For the security and safety of life and property is everyone’s responsibility.