Director-General, National Orientation Agency (NOA), Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu, has stressed the urgent need for residents in low-lying and flood-prone communities in Delta and other states to relocate to higher ground while they still have the time, in view of imminent flooding in Nigeria in the coming days and weeks.
He said that the country could not afford a repeat of the devastating floods of 2012 and 2022, which resulted in the loss of over 600 human lives while over 10,000 houses submerged, over 600,000 people displaced and property running into billions of naira lost across the country.
The NOA director-general spoke through the leader of the NOA Flood Sensitization and Evaluation Team, Mallam Nuru Yusuf Kobi, who is the agency’s Director of Planning, Research and Statistics, Abuja, during the team’s visit to Asaba, the Delta State capital, and some designated flood-prone communities in Delta North, including Oko in Oshimili South Local Government Area, at the weekend.
While noting that the agency has opened all channels of communication to alert especially flood-prone communities to the looming danger of devastating flooding of the Niger and Benue banks and distributaries, the NOA DG stressed that the team was walking round the clock as it engaged the concerned communities across the country.
Kobi said, “We are here, being one of the identified areas, to warn our people of the impending flood, because the Lagdo Dam in Cameroun has been opened to release water; so the people living along the banks of River Benue and the lower Niger River are witnessing the effects of the rising levels of water in the two major rivers.
“They are releasing not less than five million cubic meters of water into the River Benue.
“This has increased the volume of water in the river channels; and, the likely expectation is that there is going to be flooding.”
“We had very bad experience in 2012 and 2022, where not less than 600,000 (six hundred thousand) people were displaced and over ten thousand houses were submerged. This time around, we want to be proactive and put the affected communities in adequate state of readiness.”
He warned coastal or riverside communities in the state about the imminence of flooding and real danger posed by the rising water levels particularly along the rivers’ banks.
He urged them to cooperate with relevant federal and state emergency response agencies.
According to Kobi, the NOA swung into action when the Nigerian Hydrological Service Agency (NIHSA) had hinted that relevant authorities in neighboring Cameroun had informed its Nigerian counterparts that the Lagdo Dam was overflowing and needed to release water to save the dam, which would signified widespread flooding and environmental damage in parts of Nigeria.
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