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Nigeria: Again, the Menace of Flood

13 September 2007

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editorial

Lagos — Although man knows that natural elements are fairly unpredictable, he has over the years, failed to adequately make enough preparations to accommodate such unpredictable occurrences. That is why year-in year-out, several natural phenomena still take man unawares, sometimes wreaking so much havoc to lives and properties.

Only recently, nature, through flood, struck virtually every corner of the world, leaving in its trail sorrow and grave losses- human and material.

Scientists have partly attributed the floods to the phenomenon of global warming. Although scientists are reluctant to pin specific storms on global warming, global warming does create greater amounts of heat in the lower portions of the atmosphere, creating more tornado-causing energy to be released into the upper atmosphere, which also propel higher incidences of flood.

That perhaps explains why countries like the United Kingdom, United States of America and several parts of Europe have suffered severe flooding in recent times. In the UK alone, for instance, so devastating was the incident that as many as 36 local authorities were affected, prompting huge compensation bills from insurance companies, just as the UK government had spent over six million pounds to re-settle or provide relief materials to the 5,000 families affected.

In Nigeria, almost every part of the country has suffered the effect of the flood, in a scale of destruction never before experienced. From Maiduguri to Maitama, Gombe to Ughelli, it was the same story of how flood sacked homes, communities, farmlands and claimed lives.

Apart from the phenomenon of global warming most other causes of flooding - such as deforestation, desertification, blockage of drainage channels, poor town-planning schemes, deconstruction of natural landscapes among others - are largely man-made.

What this means is that flooding, though could also be caused by natural and unpredictable factors, its effects can be mitigated, if man will be more cautious in aligning with the natural orders of things.

In Lagos for instance, it is bad enough that town planning regulations have been greatly abused in the development of many layouts, yet it is worse that residents' poor sanitary habits have combined to block drainage channels, sewages and all such flood arteries causing massive floods, even with the little amount of rainfall.

It is therefore imperative that governments at all levels must begin to be proactive in dealing with the issues of flood and such other natural phenomena. We deplore a situation where the relevant agencies of government always wait till disaster strikes before contemplating combative measures.

Areas known to be prone to flood demands deliberate efforts by governments to put in place measures to either forestall future occurrence or mitigate an inevitable occurrence. It is rather unfortunate that after the ritual of bemoaning such tragedies, there is hardly concrete action to forestall reoccurrence. As it were, when the rains are over, the determination to clear the drainages and take other proactive measures also go on break. This is unacceptable.

Besides the need to flush blocked drainage channels, conscious and consistent afforestation must be pursued as a way of tackling the flood menace.

Also, dredging activities which result in reclamation of land from bodies of water, or the construction of dam must be preceded by thorough Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) to determine the suitability of such an activity.

All said, man, despite natural variables, has critical roles to play in fighting flooding. Thus, what man do or fail to do will ultimately determines how much of flood he suffers.

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