Kogi residents groan under the burden of flood
These are not the best of times for many Nigerian communities ravaged by floods. This is particularly true of communities on the banks of Rivers Niger and Benue, particularly Lokoja. In the last couple of days, the Kogi State capital has had to pay a huge price for its status as the nation’s confluence town—the meeting point of two of Africa’s largest rivers.
In Kogi State, no fewer than 20 communities have been sacked as River Niger on which they had depended for fishing activities bares its fangs after overflowing its bank. Properties that run into billions of naira are believed to have been destroyed while hundreds of families in the state are believed to have been rendered homeless.
In Lokoja alone, more than 10,000 people were reckoned to have been displaced by the flood. The areas mostly affected include Adankolo, Gadumo, Kabawa, Ganaja and Sarkin Noma. Other villages at the bank of River Niger bank were totally submerged.
At Okumi and Banda, two villages located on the Lokoja-Abuja highway, it is difficult now to believe that people once lived in the area. In Koton Karfe Local Government Area, more than seven thousand people were rendered homeless. The most affected communities in the local government include Kpareke, Irenedu, Okofi, Gbangede, Osuku Ugwo, udumose and edegaki. The residents have all moved to neighbouring Adangere where the state government has created 18 camps to accommodate the victims.
Ibaji Local Government Area in the eastern part of the state was not left out. The entire residents of the local government were sent parking by the flood. The people have since moved to the neighbouring Idah Local Government Area. Other local government areas like Bassa, Omala and Ajaokuta hardly fared better.
All together, the state government has created more than 60 camps to resettle the affected people.
The plights of residents were shared by travellers on the ever busy Lokoja-Abuja Road. Many of them had to abandon their vehicles and cross the deluge of water on the road with the aid of canoes to Banda village where a new motor park has suddenly sprung up to continue their journey.
On Monday, the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) announced the closure of the Abuja/Lokoja highway and directed motorists to other routes through which they can get to Abuja. A traveler, Musa Hassan, told our correspondent that he had spent a whole day in Lokoja because the trailer in which he travelled form Enugu could not cross the flooded road. He had heard about the flood and had deliberately travelled in a trailer, thinking that it would be able to weather the flood.
“I never knew the situation was that bad. I thought the highly suspended trailer I entered would easily pass through the flood, not knowing that the flood is capable of swallowing even a caterpillar,” he said.
Hassan added that he had to pay the canoe men who was making brisk business from the situation as much money as he had paid the trailer for Enugu to Kaduna, including the payment for his luggage, just to cross the deluge of water.
Commercial boat operators and okada (commercial motorcycle) riders abandoned their routes on the River Niger and the township roads to the flooded area to do brisk business. An okada rider, Akoji Samuel, told The Nation that he had made much more money from the flooded road than he had ever done before, charging between N200 and N500 for rides that might not last for more than two minutes.
A canoe paddler, who would not disclose his name, said he charged between N500 and N1000 per passenger. His canoe was capable of taking about nine passengers at once.
Meanwhile, flood victims are enjoying some succour from a rehabilitation centre the stte government has set up at Adankolo area of Lokoja. The refugees also appealed to the Federal Government to assist the state government in cushioning the pains of their losses.
The refugees, mostly youths, said although the state government was doing it best, there was more that needed to be done. One of them, Ismaila Isah, said he had to go to a nearby bush to answer the call of nature because there were no toilet facilities at the camp.
But the state’s Commissioner for Environment, Abdulrahaman Wuya, dismissed the claim as false, saying a primary school was being used for the camp and the government had rehabilitated all the toilets.
“You would agree with me that all primary schools have toilets for its pupils, and all the toilets have been rehabilitated,” Wuya added.
Several Federal Government delegations and agencies have visited the state to assess the extent of the damage done by the floods. Senate President, David Mark, who visited the state governor, Idris Wada, promised to discuss with the relevant Federal agencies to quickly intervene in the matter.
Mark said while a notice had been served by weather experts on the flooding, the huge devastation wasnot expected. He promised to discuss the matter with the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and other relevant agencies to come to the aid of the flood victims.
He also charged Governor Wada to act fast in order to prevent an epidemic of water borne diseases the state.
Other top government officials who had visited the state at press time include Senator Smart Adeyemi and Hon. Umar Buba Jibrin. A presidential delegation led by the Minister of Environment, Hajiya Hadiza Mai Lafiya, also visited.
Lives lost, vehicles and houses submerged at Ojukwu’s birth place, other Niger communities
For communities located along the plain of Rivers Niger and Kaduna in Niger State, especially those at the downstream part of the nation’s three hydro-electric power stations at Jebba, Kanji and Shiroro, flooding is an annual occurrence. This informed the age long agitation by the Niger State Government as well as Kebbi, Kogi and Kwara states for the establishment of a Hydro-Electric Power producing Area Development Commission (HYPPADEC).
This year, however, the floods are not ravaging only the communities along these predisposed areas, they have also overwhelmed more than half of the state. It has spread to other parts of the state which hitherto were free from floods, wrecking havocs on individuals and communities as well as animals, farmlands and property. At the last count, no fewer than 47 lives had been lost to the floods, with over 1,000 families rendered homeless.
Public facilities and hectares of farmlands in 500 communities in the state have been submerged by flood or washed away by both the excess water released from the three hydro-electricity generating dams and from the heavy downpour in the last two weeks. The Niger State Emergency Management Agency (NISEMA) put the total cost of properties lost to the floods, which include farmlands and houses, at over N1 billion. Farm produce lost to the floods are also estimated at almost N2 billion.
Many communities are now cut off from the rest of the world, while others can only be accessed with canoe as most access roads are washed off, especially in the rural areas. Many communities in Bosso, Munya, Chanchaga, Shiroro, Borgu, Mokwa, Wushishi, Bida, Edati, Lapai and Lavun local government areas have been sacked by flood. Worst hit communities include Aza, Egagi, Zdagu, Kpashafu, Ketso, Gbogifu Lenfakuso, Egbagi and Muregi, all in Mokwa Local Government Area. The people of Wuya, Kanti, Dokokpan, Tama and Emimam are yet to come to term with the reality of the devastating effects of the floods as their houses, schools, places of worship and farmlands now remain inaccessible.
In Borgu and Shiroro local government areas, flood victims are counting their losses. Their houses and business centres are either submerged or washed away. The state capital, Minna, was not spared of the disaster. A family lost two children to the flash floods in Minna. Ten-year-old Mustapha and his 12-year-old elder brother, Bashir, both children of a man named Mohammed Kudu, met their untimely and death after slipping into a flowing drainage during one of the heavy downpours.
Penultimate Saturday was a sad day for the Gwaibaita family of Gungel village in Bosso Local Government Area of the state. The family was thrown into mourning as two of its members were washed away by the flood that ravaged the village. The bodies of Abubakar and Abdullahi were found several kilometres away from their village the following day.
Alhaji Usman Adamu lost his car wash centre, his family’s only source of livelihood, located on the Eastern Bye-pass of Minna. The centre was submerged and four cars brought to the centre to be washed were buried in the flood. The flood, which came suddenly, gave Adamu no chance to rescue anything from his car wash centre.
Lamenting his plight, Adamu said: “I lost everything in the centre to the flood. I will need a lot of money to repair and fix the four cars. The flood that greeted the rain that fell last Friday caught us hands down. My boys had to run for their lives. The stream at our back overran its bank and within five minutes, my car wash centre was totally submerged and the four cars in my care were buried in the flood.
“I am now left with the burden of fixing the engines and brain boxes of the four cars and repairing the interior of the cars in my care. I have not been able to quantify the cost of these engines, brain boxes and the repairs of the interiors of the flooded cars. These are aside from my two car wash pumps – one electrically operated and the other gasoline propelled, that were washed away.”
In Zungeru, the birth place of the late warlord, Dim Odumegu Ojukwu, two Fulani herdsmen fell victim to the flood and paid the ultimate price as they were washed away along their grazing route. Many Rice farmlands in the area were also submerged.
Disturbed by the height of devastation, the flood issue occupied a prime place in the order of the day on Tuesday when the State House of Assembly resumed from its four-week recess. Hon. Bashiru Lokogoma, representing Wushishi Constituency, drew the attention of his colleagues to the destruction wrought by the flood as well as the hardship faced by victims. He regretted that peasant farmers and fishermen in many villages were now living in camps as refuges in their own land. “The victims required urgent attention,” he said.
The Director-General of Niger State Emergency Management Agency (NISEMA), Alhaji Mohammed Sabba, said 14 of the 25 local government areas in the state were affected by the floods, forcing the state to establish six relief camps for displaced persons across the state.
At Nambe relief camp, most of the displaced persons, especially vulnerable women and children, are under intense threat of epidemic as the unending number of displaced persons has overwhelmed the basic facilities provided by the state government.
Relief however came the way of the victims on Tuesday when Hon. Mohammed Sani Kutigi, a member of the House of Representatives Committee on Emergency Management facilitated the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) to bring a million naira worth of relief materials to alleviate the sufferings of the victims.
Fury of flooding in Cross River
If children in Cross River State tweaked the popular nursery rhyme a bit to sing, “Row, row, row your boat gently down the street/Merrily, merrily, merrily life is not a treat” it would definitely not be out of place, especially in most parts of the state where streams, rivers and dry land have all but become one massive body of water, following constant incidents of flooding.
Moving from house to house in most parts of affected communities now necessitates the use of canoes. The consequent hardship on the affected people is enormous.
Though the Nigerian Meteorological Agency had predicted heavy rains and flooding in most part of of the country, Cross River included, the fury with which the disaster is ravaging communities has been unprecedented. Information gotten from the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) indicates that over 42, 000 people across the state have been displaced by the flood this year.
Eleven deaths have been recorded this year alone according to the agency. In Adim in Biase a nine month old baby, Godswill Echu Okon, was been killed by the rubbles of a collapsed residential building caused by flooding. In Agwagwune, in the same Biase two twelve year olds were swept away. So far about 49 have been hospitalized from injuries caused by the flood across the state.
Over 4000 farmers have also been affected with about 106, 000 hectares of farmland washed away destroying produces as yams, cassava, cocoyam, melon, rice, vegetables among others.
Information also made available to The Nation shows that about 1059 houses have been destroyed, especially in the rural areas where they are built with mud bricks.
Local government areas worst hit by flooding caused by heavy rains include Obubra, Ogoja, Yala, Ikom, Abi, Biase, Odukpani, Boki, Obudu and Obanliku.
An entire village in Yala Local Government Area, Okpandin, was sacked. Mr Cyprian Idim an inhabitant of the area said, “We have no access to that village again and the people in that village had to be evacuated to other villages. There is no access to that village again. Water has surrounded the village.
He expressed regret that their farmland had been washed away. “We have no other occupation than farming,” he lamented.
The recent release of water from the Lagdo dam in Cameroon has compounded the situation by swelling rivers in some communities. Local government areas affected by this include Yala, Ogoja, Ikom, Obubra, Abi, Biase and Odukpani.
A community Relations Officer in Biase, Uno Ilem, lamented loss of accommodation, food, access to road and other necessities of life.
Director General of SEMA, Mr. Vincent Aquah expressed fears that the magnitude and severity of damage to lives and property would increase as the level of flood rises.
According to him, apart from extreme famine that would visit the agrarian communities as a result of the destruction of their farms by the flood housing would be a problem as many are already relocating to make shift shelters.
“These conditions are far below human standard particularly living in a slum such as this thatch house. Children and women are suffering and there is an urgent need to address the situation before it gets out of hand,” he said.
He appealed to the Federal Government and international organizations to come to the aid of the state government as it apparently has no financial capacity to effectively manage the situation alone.
Mr. Aquah said sensitization campaigns have already begun in all the communities along the coastline being affected by the flood said that relocation to higher grounds was the only options for the vulnerable villages.
