Anambra State Governor Chukwuma Soludo says floods have submerged one-third of the state, worsening the state’s already “bad situation” as the “erosion capital of Nigeria.”
“The fundamental thing for us is not so much the ravage of this flood, it has made a bad situation worse for us in Anambra. The environment is Anambra’s number one existing threat. Anambra is the gully erosion capital of Nigeria with about 30% of our lands under threat by gully erosion,” the governor said on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme on Tuesday monitored by Newsclick Nigeria.
He said his government has been “cleaning up drainages just to let water get to the river but now water from the rivers now overwhelm one-third of the state, even a little more than one-third of the state”.
Soludo said Nigeria must have a national emergency conversation about flooding to avert recurrence.
“What is the nation doing to prepare for the next one because we know that it will happen again and again? It has been happening, and Cameroon will soon open the dam in the next one or two years. What is the national plan to deal with the next one? Whether we are going to build dams or embankments along the banks of the rivers. I think as a nation, we need a national emergency conversation,” he stated.
Floods have hit parts of Nigeria in the last two months with the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) saying that about 2.5 million persons were affected and over 603 persons killed by the flooding caused by torrential rainfall of late.
Houses and farmlands have been submerged in Lagos, Yobe, Borno, Taraba, Adamawa, Edo, Delta, Kogi, Niger, Plateau, Benue, Ebonyi, Anambra, Bauchi, Gombe, Kano, Jigawa, Zamfara, Kebbi, Sokoto, Imo, Abia States, and the Federal Capital Territory.
President Muhammadu Buhari ordered emergency responders to provide relief materials to flood victims but Soludo said though NEMA has been discharging its responsibilities in the state alongside the state government, NEMA’s response is “too little” and “too late”.
He said the National Assembly must come up with a forceful response to flooding which has become a perennial disaster in the country.