FLOODS: CRY THY BELOVED COUNTRY
By Babatunde Jose
Man has been engaged in an endless struggle with nature since his emergence from the Garden of Eden. One such deadly calamity is flood. Floods cause irreparable and immense losses. However, technological advancements have led to the development of early warning systems and improved disaster management techniques. Even then, floods occur because they are acts of nature.
In Surah Al Qamar, the Quran described Noah’s flood, when it said: Water rose from the cracks in the earth; there was not a crack from which water did not rise. Rain poured from the sky in quantities never seen before on the earth. Water continued pouring from the sky and rising from the cracks, hour after hour the level rose. The seas and waves invaded the land. The interior of the earth moved in a strange way, and the ocean floors lifted suddenly, flooding the dry land. The earth, for the first time, was submerged. See Quran 54:11-12.
Professor Jonathan Nott, a palaeohazards expert at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia says part of the problem is that we “continue to build in the path of floods,” regardless of history, and allow populations to increase in low-lying floodplains. While we are “very good at dealing with emergencies when they arise,” he says, “we are not so good at mitigating against disaster.”
Especially in this part of the world called Africa. We are a disaster as a people not to talk of the cursed leadership we have bestowed upon ourselves. People with questionable pedigree or ‘jagbajantis’, they have no mission in government or vision of a better society. Unfortunately, we brought these on ourselves: Joseph de Maistre said, every nation gets the government it deserves.
All they care about are their pockets and their immediate wellbeing. Political ‘hushpuppies’; we can all be carried away by the flood waters so long as their homes on the hilltops are safe and their SUVs can wade through the flood. Their children do not school here, so they are saved from the flood like Noah’s children in the Ark.
While other countries are daily developing devices to ameliorate the effects of floods and preventive measures to ensure minimal destruction of life and property, we here are aggravating our vulnerability.
Yes, flooding is a natural phenomenon but with the march of science and visionary leadership, man has been able to reduce some of these tragedies. Unfortunately, we are not there yet. Therefore, when natural disasters come, we are all on our own.
According to An-Najjar there are at least 750 verses in the Holy Quran that encourage people to think and contemplate about nature. On the contrary, the Holy Quran denounces people who disregard it because God has given them the faculty of thinking. All of these reflect the importance of nature in the Islamic worldview.
Great floods have been experienced in the past and they have been a lesson for the countries where they occurred and a footstool for eventual fight against flood disasters, but not here in this clime.
On December 12, 1287, the St. Lucia’s Flood affected the Netherlands and North Germany. It caused the death of 70,000 people. Places like ‘Friesland’ got permanently flooded. And the flood brought direct sea access to the village of Amsterdam, and this led to the development of Amsterdam into a major City of canals and dikes.
The Red River Delta flood affected North Vietnam on 1st August 1971 and killed more than 100,000 people. This event marked the century’s most serious weather event throughout the world. After this flood, efforts were put in place to stop a disaster of such magnitude in future by building dams and creating artificial river tributaries.
The 1931 China floods or the Central China Floods; considered the most devastating among all other disasters in the world. It included a series of floods back-to-back resulting in the death of around 4 million people. Several animals and cattle were killed as well. This flood affected over 25 million people. This was the deadliest disaster and sent a warning to all the countries around the globe to set up efficient disaster management systems.
But have we as a people learnt any lesson from the frequent floods that visit our clime? Flooding has sacked countless cities and communities in our country, sometimes leading to the closure of schools; what have we done to obviate such calamities? The people of Lokoja would have stories to tell and people of Makoko too.
In 2012, Nigeria floods began in early July killing 363 people, 30 of Nigeria’s 36 states were affected by the floods. The floods were termed as the worst in 40 years and affected an estimated seven million people.
Nigeria sees flooding every year, often because of non-implementation of environmental guidelines and inadequate infrastructure. Authorities are blaming the floods this year on water overflowing from local rivers, unusual rainfalls, and the release of excess water from Lagdo dam in neighbouring Cameroon’s northern region.
The ongoing floods, described as the worst flood in a decade has killed over 600 people and destroyed houses all over the country from Awka to Koton Karfi, Lokoja to Warri, Yenagoa to Ketu. People rowing canoes on macadamized roads now turned into rivers that only speed boats can ply.
Buildings without approvals, building on flood plains, building across drainage channels and other forms of urban rascality coupled with the government’s lackadaisical attitude towards early warning systems, disaster prevention and management are the remote causes of the floods. Hence, the current flooding has been described as a disaster foretold.
There are facts to suggest that a Memorandum of Understanding was arrived at during the construction of the Lagdo dam which stipulated that Nigeria would have to construct some mini dams on the Benue River to obviate the disastrous flooding that would be occasioned by the perennial release of excess water from this dam.
But trust our leaders, we never kept to the terms. We are suffering the inevitable disaster now. The Nigerian government should be blamed for this; for over 30 years, we have been dealing with the same issues, something that could have been resolved…. There is no assurance that this won’t happen on a larger scale again.
Similar disaster is what will befall the riverine communities along the Ogun River when Ogun-Osun River-Basin Authority releases excess waters of the Oyan Dam.
Despite ”concerted efforts” and early warnings, many state governments “did not prepare” for the flooding. The disaster has affected 27 of Nigeria’s 36 states. Part of the problem is that people return to their homes on flood plains each year after the water levels subside. Many do not have the means to relocate.
The government has disclosed that the natural disaster claimed 603 lives, affected 2,504,095 persons, and displaced 1,302,589 persons across the country: partially damaged 108,392 hectares of farmlands and totally damaged 332,327 hectares of farmlands, across Nigeria. There is no doubt our food security is threatened. Food scarcity and higher food prices are inevitable.
This, in an economy that has been battered with inflation at an all-time high and many communities struggling to cope. The World Food Program and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization said last month that Nigeria was among six countries facing a high risk of catastrophic levels of hunger. The flooding will now exacerbate this problem.
The questions being asked are: Why were the flood alerts by relevant government agencies not heeded? How do we prevent the recurrence of this perennial challenge? Truly, with the help of science and technology it is possible to forecast the weather and take preemptive and preventive actions. Unfortunately, it does not seem as if people heeded the early warning signs of the excessive rainfall predicted for the year.
Like the time of Noah in the Bible when God commanded him to build an Ark to save the people from the flood that wiped away the “first world”, Nigerians in the riverine communities likewise showed lackadaisical attitude to flood alerts. Some people insisted on not leaving their ancestral homes. Now, they have prematurely gone to meet their ancestors in heaven.
Obviously, the government and its agencies have not done enough to sensitize people against the dangers of their recalcitrance. There’s nothing wrong if the government had forcefully evacuated the people in the river basin communities to safe shelters and destroyed the shanties and houses built on flood plains. There should have also been stricter enforcement of environmental sanitation regulations.
There are dams’ government should have built and rivers that should have been dredged which the government had not done. This is axiomatic of our attitude to disaster in this country. As Waziri Adio rightly observed: Apart from episodic statements and interventions by officials, some disturbing but occasional footages, and predictable resort to the blame game, there is hardly anything to signify that a disaster of this proportion is ongoing in Nigeria.
The president carries on with his usual detached pace, and those jostling to succeed him have not seen reason to, even if just for campaign brownie points, speak to how to stem these recurring losses to life and property. The response of the civil and business societies is the same as that of the political society.
Indeed, three weeks ago when Deutsche Welle (DW), the German international radio and TV station tweeted that Nigeria has suffered one of its worst floods in decades, and some international climate activists retweeted it, virtually every one of the many Nigerians who reacted to the tweet showed surprise. They claimed ignorance of it, stating that the local media did not even carry it, prompting some of the international journalists and activists to allege political cover up. So, such was going on, but the local press was busy focusing on elections and the nonsense being spewed out by political gladiators.
There is a need for the government and the people to have behavioral change. Cry thy beloved country!
Barka Juma’at and a happy weekend
Babatunde Jose
