Heavy rain brings flooding to Benue homes

Torrential rainfall early hours of Monday caused flooding in many residential homes around Makurdi and environs of Benue State.

Our correspondent reports that the rain started about midnight of Sunday and continued all through Monday morning.

Many residents who were affected tried to scoop water out of their immersed homes while in some areas, crops in farms were washed away.

Residents of Wurukum Market, Otukpo Road by NNPC Mega fuel station, Gboko Road, Demekpe community, Achussa, the SRS junction along University of Agriculture, and Ishaya Bakut Road, among other areas, were observed moving their valuable items to safe grounds.

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Other residents such as students and lecturers of the Joseph Sarwuan Tarka University (JOSTUM), formerly Federal University of Agriculture, Makurdi (FUAM), who attempted to defy the continued rain found themselves stranded when they could not access the road leading to the university campus occasioned by the flood.

 A student union leader at JOSTUM, Mimidoo Gundu, had raised the alarm Monday morning, lamenting the situation and calling on the federal and state governments to come to their aid before the situation would further degenerate.

“This morning water blocked the road that links SRS junction to Joseph Sarwuan Tarka University Makurdi around Antsa and Ichwa. 

“This has been a huge obstacle for staff and students to get to school and it is very disheartening. I urge the federal/state government and the school management to look into this problem before it gets worse and damages the road,” she told journalists in Makurdi. 

Ego Kemba, a resident of Achussa, said already some of her household items had been affected by the water which flooded her house.

Meanwhile, the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) Executive Secretary, Sir James Iorpuu, had in a statement made available to journalists in Makurdi, urged residents in flood-prone areas to evacuate to higher grounds.

Iorpuu said the agency has concluded arrangements to convert public schools in 22 out of the 23 local government areas of the state to camps for affected residents.