The boatmen of Bayelsa

With communities flooded in Bayelsa State, residents rely on boatmen to get them into and out of their homes safely, for a token fee, as our correspondent reports.

In the midst of the perennial flooding ravaging communities in Bayelsa State that has affected numerous businesses, boat owners in the riverine state are making a killing ferrying people across waterlogged areas.

The year 2020 has been a tough one for Bayelsa State starting with the COVID-19 lockdown that strained local economies. Massive flooding have followed to make life harder for the people with hundreds forced to relocate from their homes, while property worth millions have also been lost.

Bayelsa is only located 206 metres above sea level and is the basin into which rivers Niger and Benue, the largest rivers in the country, pass through to empty into the Atlantic Ocean.

In most communities in Yenagoa, the state capital, which have been ravaged by the floods, such as Akenfa l, Osiri and Edipie, residents now navigate their way home through the aid of canoes for which each passenger is charged N30.

One of the boat operators, Godsday Preye, told Daily Trust that the floodwater has submerged the wooden bridge they collectively constructed and the only way they could save people from being drowned, as was the case in previous years, is to use their canoes to transport residents across Edepie Creek.

He said the charges are minimal because it is only a token to motivate the operators who should not go home hungry after spending the whole day ferrying people across the creek.

“My brother, we all know the economic challenges we had early this year due to COVID-19. A lot of us here have lost our work. Even when things were trying to pick up, the flood came. It’s a double disaster for us in 2020,” Preye said.

“Though the idea of using these canoes is not principally about the money, but to help protect people from drowning, we still get some good money from it. It’s the way of survival in a country like Nigeria, where leaders don’t think about us,” he said.

He said most people have been sacked from their homes by the floods but the few who patronise the boats may be the lucky ones whose houses have not been completely submerged yet. Very soon, he fears, they too would become homeless.

“October is always the peak of flooding in Bayelsa State,” he said.

Another operator who simply identified himself as Ebipade, said it was just their personal initiative to help people and also generate an income for themselves.

Despite the small gains, he would rather the government opens canals and waterways to help address the yearly flooding in the state.

According to him, if the major rivers in the state and other Niger Delta states are dredged, the problem of flooding could be mitigated, adding that the people of the region have suffered a lot from natural disasters.

“If not oil and gas spillage, it would be floods. If not water or air pollution, it would be COVID-19,” he said. “The greater number of fishes in our rivers have all died because of these natural disasters. In time past, if we were hungry and wanted to cook soup, we would just take our boats to the nearby river and fish. Now it’s not so.”

He pleaded for government’s intervention, as he feared they could not continue in that state of living.

Recently, The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) had urged the Bayelsa State Government to take proactive measures to mitigate the impending flood disaster in the state as the rainy season peaks.

The Director-General of NEMA, retired AVM Muhammadu Muhammed gave the advice during a flood advocacy visit to the state government and the Central Naval Command of the Nigerian Navy.

He also said that it was the responsibility of the government and people to minimise loses through adherence to warning alerts, early preparation and proper responses.

Muhammed, who was represented by the NEMA Deputy Director for Planning Research and Forecast, Mrs Fatima Kazeem, said that Bayelsa State is one of the probable states to witness flooding going by the 2020 seasonal rainfall prediction and the annual flood outlook.

He advised the state government to direct its Emergency Management Agency (SEMA), frontline local governments and other response agencies to put in place measures to mitigate any disaster.

He also emphasised the need to intensify public enlightenment campaigns targeting vulnerable communities to undertake mitigation actions and prepare for evacuation to safe grounds.

The state government, he said, needed to identify high grounds for camps and shelter for people who were likely to be displaced by the floods.

Those warnings might have helped. However, hundreds of Bayelsans have been flushed out of their homes and dozens of communities have been displaced.

Already, the people of Elemebiri Community in Sagbama Local Government Area have cried out to the state and federal governments to come to their aid as they battle with flooding and coastal erosions, which are currently threatening the existence of the community.

A community leader, Mr Johnson Otobo, described the yearly flooding of the community as a big problem that needs urgent attention from all relevant government agencies like the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and its state counterpart, the Metrological Agency of Nigeria, amongst others.

“Many people have been displaced while farmlands have been destroyed and the community cut off from neighbouring communities,” he said. “We need the help of Governor Douye Diri and all the relevant authorities. We are suffering. We no longer have food to eat.

“Let the state and federal governments come and do an environmental impact assessment on Elemebiri Community and know exactly what we are passing through so that they can take urgent necessary action to prevent our community from going extinct,” the community leader said.

Governor Douye Diri of Bayelsa State recently urged the National Emergency Management Agency, (NEMA) to correct the misconception that only three local government areas of the state suffer from flooding, insisting that all the eight local governments are always affected.

The governor also assured NEMA of the state government’s readiness to support it carry out an objective assessment of environmental challenges facing the state including flooding.

He said the state government has already set machinery on ground to mitigate the effects of this year’s flooding on the residents.

However, thousands of residents continue to rely on the boatmen of Bayelsa to get them to their homes that are on the brink of being flooded.