April 21, (THEWILL) – The rains are coming and the Federal Government has raised the alarm of impending flooding across the country for 2024 with 148 local government areas across 31 states already identified as high flood-risk areas, while 249 others in the 36 states and Abuja were listed among the moderate flood risk areas.
The states listed as the high-risk states in the recently-released Annual Flood Outlook (AFO) for 2024 include Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Bauchi, Bayelsa, Benue, Borno, Cross River, Delta, Ebonyi, Edo, Imo, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Kogi, Kwara, Lagos, Nasarawa, Niger, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, Oyo, Plateau, Rivers, Sokoto, Taraba and Yobe States.
Minister of Water Resources and Sanitation, Professor Joseph Terlumun Utsev, while unveiling the AFO in Abuja, last Monday, disclosed that the flooding would come between April and November as he called for concerted efforts, including preparedness, early warning systems and community engagement, to mitigate the effects of the flooding across the already identified areas.
The recent flooding which wreaked devastating effects in an unexpected location such as Dubai, United Arab Emirate, just last week, is a timely warning. Again, that flooding, which is caused in most cases by climate change and blockade of canals and waterways due to urban planning lapses in some other instances, could be so fatal.
Every year in Nigeria, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency (NIHSA), as well as the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMET) always roll out alerts and warning signals to states to prepare for what has become a perennial flooding and states that fail to act fast are always at the receiving end with devastating consequences.
Nigerians will not forget in a hurry the havoc wreaked by the 2022 flooding, the worst in a decade, which the World Bank estimated the total loss to be about a whopping $6.68 billion.
THEWILL recalls that the 2022 flooding swept through about 34 states and impacted over 2.5 million people as over 200,000 houses were either partially or fully damaged and no fewer than 600 people reportedly died in the massive flooding, which also displaced 1.5 million others.
The 2022 flooding came exactly 10 years after a similar one in 2012 in which the country lost over N2 trillion to the rampaging floods with farmlands, livestock and houses swept away, thus compounding the food insecurity challenges in the country.
As the 2024 flooding looms large, we want to commend state,s such as Lagos and Akwa Ibom, among others, for being proactive about measures to mitigate the effects of the impending flooding. Lagos has stepped up the clearing of structures along the waterways and has been pulling down houses constructed on canals and drainages across the state.
The Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Umo Eno, is also moving fast to constitute a committee to interface with relevant government agencies in working out necessary modalities to mitigate the effects of the looming flood.
Akwa Ibom is one of the 31 states already identified as being at high risk of the impending flood and the committee was set up by the governor two days after the Federal Government issued the warning alert.
We advise other states still foot dragging in working out modalities to mitigate the effects of the impending flooding to act fast before the torrential rains come in order to reduce the effects in their respective states.
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