Nigeria takes stricter measures to curb further flooding
Rahila Lassa,
The Nigerian Government says it has come up with approaches to ensure that the damage caused by the torrential rainfall is not further worsen.
Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Dr Sani Gwarzo said this at a Press conference with journalists in Abuja, Nigeria.
The Permanent Secretary said the three approaches will address the immediate, short and long term issues.
We also came up with three prompt approach for the future; First, what are the immediate action to be taken by the respective agencies, second, what are the short term measures that will be taken by the agencies responsible and then long-term actions.
“It suffices to tell Nigerians that we’re very much aware of what’s happening and we’re prepared to reduce the impact and we’re also prepared to make sure that those places that have not been affected yet, at least gets some relief” .Gwarzo explained.
According to him, early in the year, NIMET had predicted that some parts of the country will witness increased rainfall.
“And also deep into the rainy season we also came to the reality that the dam in one of the neighboring countries had been released in order to prevent a bigger catastrophe and that has also increased the volume of water that Nigeria is taking in and has resulted in the flooding”. He maintained.
” Since the year 2012 where we had a major incident of this kind, we’re witnessing another flooding issue which is at a very high scale and from all indications, experts in various aspects of controlling this disaster have informed us that the scale is almost similar to that of the 2012 level and therefore we decided to come together as agencies responsible for various aspects of the response to take a quick decision on the way forward. Whereas so many communities have been affected, there’s still prediction that many more communities may be affected especially those at the lines of the River Benue and River Niger and down up to the Ocean. And so far the various agencies that are responsible for this are controlling or mitigating the impacts, have made their contributions so that the impact will be reduced and whatever needs to be rescued ahead can be rescued”.
While responding to questions from journalists, the Permanent Secretary said government will deploy all forms of strategies to ensure that people move from all potentially submerged areas to safer places to avoid more disasters.
” With these, all the agencies that are here have renewed their commitment to strengthen their efforts in reaching out to the people affected and bringing relief to them. By the grace of God,this will be reduced to minimum and more lives will be saved.”
The National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA had distributed relief materials to no fewer than three hundred and fifteen thousand people that are displaced across the lines of the flood impact.
It’s also on record that more than five hundred persons have been reported dead and one million, four hundred and fifty one persons are affected/displaced.
