Okechukwu Nnodim, Abuja
The Minister of Water Resources, Suleiman Adamu, has said it is the responsibility of state and local governments to put in place adequate preventive measures against flooding in their respective domains and not the duty of the Federal Government.
According to him, the Federal Government’s responsibility is to provide the requisite information through its Annual Flood Outlook reports. Adamu said it was unfortunate that many states and local governments failed to heed the warnings contained in the AFO released by the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency.
Reacting to an enquiry on what the Federal Government was doing to prevent flooding in communities, following the release of the 2018 AFO, Adamu said, “It is part of our responsibility to alert the country to the flood outlook and what is likely to happen based on the data we’ve been gathering, predictions and mathematical models. There is a way to mitigate disaster and that is why we provide the necessary warnings.
“Unfortunately, sometimes, as I’ve seen in the last two years, the communities and other agencies or levels of government don’t seem to take this flood outlook very seriously and then we continue to have loss of lives. Remember last year in Madala, Niger State, there was a very serious flood disaster.
“We can only provide the information and it is left for the state governments and the communities themselves to now take the necessary action they need to take.”
When probed further on what his ministry was doing aside from the AFO, Adamu replied, “We, as the Federal Government, cannot take the preventive measures, we can only provide the information. The states and the local governments run the communities directly; they are the ones that need to take the measures.
“Stop building in flood-prone areas, stop giving building permits there, discourage illegal construction of buildings on water courses, clean up water drains regularly to ensure that water is allowed to flow, create artificial flood plains, and if there are natural flood plains, allow them to remain because they absorb some of the major run-offs from other cities. These are the major things.”
The PUNCH had reported on May 11, 2018, that 380 local government areas in 35 states would experience flooding this year, according to the recently released 2018 Annual Flood Outlook.
The Acting Director-General, NIHSA, Olayinka Ogunwale, had said, “Out of the 35 states that will be affected, 380 will be involved. The highly probable ones are 78 in number and they are spread all over the country. But the severity of flooding in 2018 will not be as bad as what we had last year and, of course, it cannot be compared to what we had in 2012.
“However, it is important to let those in flood-prone areas to know that the country will still experience flooding in 2018 and people in such locations should evacuate. This is one of the reasons for the AFO and the warnings from our agency and, of course, the government.”
On whether Nigeria’s dams were safe to help contain the predicted floods, Adamu said the facilities were in good shape, as they were regulated by the River Basin Authorities of the Federal Government.
He said, “If there is a safety issue, of course, a dam can be threatened. But most of our dams are still safe. The only thing is that some of them are getting silted up and therefore their storage capacities are reducing and a lot of water gets spilled through the spillways. But when that happens, our river basin agencies which are the custodians of these dams usually provide the necessary warning.”
source: http://punchng.com/states-not-fg-should-tackle-flooding-says-minister/
