It is no longer news that Nigeria experiences fatal floods annually which claim many lives and destroy property especially buildings, infrastructures and farmlands.
The flood menace has become a cog in the wheel of the Federal Government’s missions of the Green Alternative, food security, job creation, Anchor Borrowers’ Programme, poverty reduction, economic diversification, exertion to bring back the country’s lost ranking as the food basket of the African continent and the entire 17 UN’s SDGs.
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On 6 May of this year, at a public presentation of the 2021 Annual Flood Outlook (AFO) of the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency (NIHSA), Nigeria’s Minister of Water Resources and Rural Development, Sulaiman Adamu forewarned that 28 states and the FCT were likely to experience more devastating floods from the end of August to early October.
The prediction has become a reality as some states recently witnessed a severe flooding which was compounded by lack of drainage networks, annual release of water from the Cameroonian Lagdo Dam and lack of holding dams.
Optimistically, the significance of dams cannot be underestimated towards averting ferocious floods, boosting irrigation farming, generating hydroelectric power and providing water for domestic activities. Hence, apart from state-owned dams, Nigeria is fortuitously endowed with more than 323 large, medium and small abandoned federal-owned dams deserving to be completed and revived and reconstructed.
Now, Nigerians have over the years been looking forward to having patriotic, visionary and considerate leaders capable of constructing a holding dam across River Niger, River Benue and the course of the Lagdo Dam of Cameroon for mitigating annual petrifying floods bred by the release of the dam.
I strongly call on the president to help keep his administration’s promises of constructing 400 dams across the country and addressing the life-threatening issue of climate change so as to salvage Nigeria’s future generations and the entire world from a quandary.
Mustapha Baba writes from Bauchi State
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