Editorial
•Global warming is making flooding a global menace. But our sub-par drainage systems don’t help matters
Kebbi, Bauchi and Jigawa states are early disturbing signs of the menace of flooding this year — and it’s even not near the climax. Kebbi has been especially dire, with vast farmlands completely under water, thus threatening food security nationwide next year, Kebbi being a major grain centre.
That is why the latest flood alert, from the Federal Government to states, couldn’t have come at a better time. After a break that lasted beyond the traditional August, the rains are pounding with fresh fury again.
The alert, from Sadiya Umar-Farouq, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, via Nneka Anibeze, her special assistant on media, had warned flood-prone states to prepare for flood emergency, rescue and rehabilitation.
The alert, under the “2020 Seasonal Rainfall Prediction and the Annual Flood Outook”, projects 102 local governments in 28 states will experience heavy rainfall. Another 275, in the entire 36 states of the federation, including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) of Abuja, will have moderate flooding.
The spread of the coming flood is rather alarming. Heavy rainfall will bash 28 of Nigeria’s 30 states, though in specific local governments (102) in those states. Then, the entire 36 states plus FCT, will experience one type of flooding or another — though again limited to some specific 275 local governments there.
From Nigeria’s 774 officially recognised local government areas, therefore, almost half — 377 — will experience heavy rain and flooding, sparing 397 — just over a half — as possible highlands that the states must prepare for rescue and evacuation camps. The figures would even be direr, were they to be charted along the map of local government council development areas (LCDAs), already created but not yet listed in the Constitution.
Specifically, Borno, Yobe, Gombe, Adamawa, Taraba, Bauchi, Plateau, Nasarawa, Benue, Niger, Kogi, Enugu, Anambra, Imo, Abia and Rivers will be pummelled by heavy rains; and probably the worst flooding crisis.
That is why these states must now identify highlands as rescue camps, for their flood-prone areas, as the federal alert has recommended; and also come up with solid palliative plans for affected households, particularly the rural farming families (whose livelihoods the floods might destroy) and the displaced urban poor and others, who live in the flood plains.
But even states like Lagos and Ogun, not mentioned in this latest alert, must not fold their arms. In fairness, Lagos has gone on a long binge of sensitisation, warning and de-silting of drains and canals. Yet, parts of the state — notably Lekki, Igbogbo and Ogba, Ikeja — had reported heavy flash flooding.
These floods result from rising global ocean and sea levels, no thanks to global warming, leading to a thaw in the world’s glacial zones, of the Arctic and Antarctica. There is therefore an urgent need for a fresh, tough international protocol to curb global warming.
But beyond this global plague, Nigerians are also notorious for vicious environmental abuse. Each flooding reveals a mass float of cellophane, plastic bottles and allied junk, be-speaking a people that disperse light wastes with reckless abandon — in open spaces, and clogged drains. The collapse of municipal services, particularly in routine clearing of drains, only aggravates the situation. Rainfall and concomitant flooding just expose this freewheeling and reckless environmental abuse.
So, as we seek tough international protocols to checkmate global warming and slow down climate change, we desire no less tough local environmental laws, that crack down on individual environmental recklessness that comes back to haunt and hurt the rest of us.
That would appear a more systemic and sustainable local approach to cope with a global environmental menace that perhaps would get worse before it gets better.
