Ravaging flood on Tuesday sacked residents of Osogbo, Osun State capital and also destroyed wares in shops at the popular Olaiya and Ogo-Oluwa areas following a heavy downpour.
The residents were seen evacuating water and cleaning their homes while shop owners tried to salvage what remained of their wares at their various shops as they lamented losses running into millions of naira.
A phone store was among those affected from which expensive new phones were evacuated from the water, while a boutique was submerged by water and clothes and clothing material brought out from the muddy flood water.
The owners of the affected properties said they did not envisage that the midnight rain could bring such quantity of water.
One of the affected residents, Mr Ajala Adewumi of Ogo-Oluwa, in a chat with Daily Trust said the flood flowed into his house and destroyed his properties including clothes and foodstuff.
The Commissioner for Information in the state, Mrs. Funke Egbemode, described the incident as very unfortunate and appealed to the people to desist from indiscriminate dumping of refuse in waterways and drainage.
Egbemode said the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) had warned that Osun might experience massive flood and the state government started dredging the waterways earlier so as to pave way for water to flow freely.
Meanwhile, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has said that with the intensity of the rains, more areas are expected to experience heavy flooding in Imo State. The agency, therefore, appealed to the state government to show more commitment to disaster management, especially in flood control.
Director-General of the agency, Air Vice Marshal Mohammed Mohammed (Rtd), who spoke in Owerri during an advocacy visit to Imo to ascertain the level of the state’s preparedness in flood control, said that Imo is among the states in Nigeria likely to witness flood disaster in 2020 as predicted by Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NIMET).
He mentioned Ohaji-Egbema location government, Ogutt, Oru-East and Owerri North as highly probable flood risk areas, while also informing that other LGAs which do not fall under high probability may also be affected.
