Many lowland communities located in Nigeria’s River Benue basin live in absolute dread of the month of September. Depending on the mood of officials in charge of the Lagdo Dam in Garoua, northern Cameroon, entire towns and villages in Adamawa, Taraba, Benue, Niger states, and going all the way to the Niger Delta, could be washed away by floods that typically leave the landscape looking apocalyptic. When the flood comes, it usually lasts only a few weeks, but leaves long-term devastation in its wake as it sweeps away human lives, homes, property and livelihoods!
While relatively less flooding was experienced in the usual areas last year, same cannot be said of 2012 when floods displaced about 2.3 million people; killed 363 persons and destroyed about 597,476 houses in 30 states, according to official figures from the Nigerian National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). In fact, post-disaster assessment surveys put the estimated total value of damages and losses to the flood at about 2.6 trillion Naira or US$16.9 billion! In a broadcast to the nation, the then President Goodluck Jonathan unveiled a relief package of N17.6 billion. The Federal Government also received about N2.5billion (US$12.8 million) from donors (individuals and organizations) as part of the flood relief fund. The total was a whooping N2.6 trillion!
Now, there had been credible allegations that these funds were not used in transparent and accountable fashion, but that is not really the main focus of this article. Of course, this is not to minimize the importance of accountability and transparency in emergency management, but the larger concern here is that this scenario, with changes only in inflationary terms, has been re-occurring since Cameroon built Lagdo Dam in 1980 with absolutely no evidence of lessons learnt! Just two weeks ago, the Cameroonian government notified Nigeria of its plan to commence routine release of excess water from Lagdo between August and November this year. When the floodgates of this dam are opened, lowland communities in the Nigerian side of the border are damned.
Sadly, Nigeria’s reaction to this warning has been to, in turn, warn “all those living around the dam and along River Benue in Garoua up to Nigeria to be at alert and be ready for evacuation in case of possible flooding.” [Translation: lowland communities are, once again, on their own in the face of imminent catastrophe!]
The Director General , NEMA, Alhaji Muhammad Sani Sidi told newsmen in Abuja last week that NEMA had reached out to governors of the states that are usually worst hit by the floods to commence emergency response planning and to prepare safe locations for possible evacuation of communities at risk.
NEMA did not disappoint with its predictable response. It’s a script that has been rehashed every August since the NEMA Act came into effect in 1999. However offensive and absurd NEMA’s response may sound, it pales into insignificance against the confounding level of lack of intelligence packed into the Federal Government’s response, which is as old as 1981 when the annoyingly famous “Dasin Hausa Dam” was designed but never built.
The background to this pathetic failure by successive Nigerian governments is this: Well before Lagdo Dam became operational in 1981, both Cameroon and Nigeria had agreed a year earlier that the latter would embark on a similar project on its side of the border to contain excess water released upstream from the dam as a means of curbing possible flooding in its territories. In 1981 the “Dasin Hausa Dam,” conceived as a shock-absorber dam, was designed by Nigeria. It was simply visionary in concept, scope and design! It was not only supposed to mitigate flooding from Lagdo Dam, but was also expected to generate 300 megawatts of electricity and provide irrigation for over 150,000 hectares of land with the hope of generating an estimated 790,000 tons of crops in Adamawa, Taraba and Benue states.
This project was also intended to provide about 40,000 jobs and open up the Benue River for inland water transportation from Nigeria’s southern ports, all the way to Garoua in Cameroon. The dam was to be sited in Dasin village in Fufore Local Government Area, Adamawa State.
Now, fast-forward by 34 years and the response from the Nigerian Government has yet to change! The Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Water Resources, Mr. Musa Istifanus told journalists in Abuja last week that the government was making efforts to see that the construction of the dam commenced. Thirty-four years later and we are still making efforts to see that the construction of the dam commenced!
It should be noted that peak flow in the River Benue at Garoua end is usually in the months of August and September. According to the Cameroonian weather website www.climatemps.com, the average flow observed in the river at Garoua in August this year is about 247.9 mm or 9.7inches! This is the wettest time of the year for Garoua, when the rains are at their peak and the authorities are often compelled to release the accumulated excess water from the Lagdo Dam to save their own Cameroonian communities. Nigeria, ever so unprepared, gets to bear the brunt while Cameroon does not only protect its population, but even generates electricity for them to boot! Some have even described it as some form of cold (water) war on Nigeria by Cameroon.
The truth of the matter is that as long as Nigeria does not build that Dasin Hausa Dam, it will never be in a position to contain the perennial floods as neither of the country’s two major rivers has its origin within its territory. While the larger River Niger has its source in the highlands of Guinea, River Benue, itself a major tributary of the Niger, rises in the Adamawa Plateau in northern Cameroon, from where it flows west, and through the town of Garoua and into the Lagdo Lake and on through Nigeria’s Adamawa, Taraba and Benue states before reuniting with the Niger in Lokoja, Kogi State. The 40-metre high Lagdo Dam straddles the Benue at about 50km upstream of Garoua.
Apart from repeating the line about building the Dasin Hausa Dam each time there is a flood or threat of one, the Federal Government has also added another tired stanza to its song, namely, the dredging of the River Benue to deepen it and to also boost inland water transportation.
Over the years, a huge volume of silt has built up in the riverbed and rendered it so shallow that it doesn’t take much water for it to flood its banks and cause damage to lowland communities. That is why the idea of dredging the riverbed makes absolutely perfect environmental, security and economic sense. Earlier in July, the Federal Government announced the award of a N26 billion contract for the dredging of the lower River Benue basin to Messrs Oyins Oil & Gas Limited. The project is expected to be completed in two years, the government says. But whether or not there are plans to also dredge the upper River Benue basin is something the government is not saying at the moment. However, whether the government admits it publicly or not, the urgency of the need to dredge the upper River Benue basin cannot be lost on anyone who has seen the devastation caused by flooding in those areas.
Without a doubt, perennial flooding poses serious thought to Nigeria’s food security. It also comes with public health challenges and sets the environment back by decades. It robs the affected communities of homes and livelihoods and leads even to death. It causes the government to incur avoidable economic costs, a luxury that Nigeria could ill afford given the crying need for investment in public services, infrastructure, security and the national economy. Building the Dasin Hausa Dam and dredging the Benue may cost a fortune in the short term, but it is a much cheaper option in the long-term, just like it was 34 years ago.
The challenge to President Muhammadu Buhari, whose government enjoys unprecedented local and global sympathy, is to move quickly to show that he meant his promise of making Nigeria better again by saving ordinary people from watching their lives swept away by a flood that has been more than three decades in the making.
Ethan is a 200-level student of Mass Communication, Taraba State University. [email protected]
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