By Tunde Olusunle
Your eyes are instantly arrested by the unusual
volume of the Benue River as you drive into Makurdi from the Daudu/Agan
abutments of the capital of Benue State, this quiet afternoon.
You glide past the approach bridge, and glimpse to your left, the “Makurdi Golf Course,” hitherto seated by the scenic lips of the river. It is soaked, sadly now, swamped and submerged by the overabundance of liquid blessings. Ahead of you is the attention-commanding artwork of a huge basket bearing a variety of farm produce, an attestation to the pride of the place of Benue State as the epicentre of food production in the country.
The image sits strategically at the intersection which leads to
the nation’s South East and South-South stretches. The scourge of the floods,
you come to understand, is the reason that your host, Samuel Ioraer Ortom,
Governor of the state, could barely savour the nation’s 62nd Independence
Anniversary, two days later.
He began his day that Saturday, Oct 1, 2022, by attending the interdenominational church service commemorating the national landmark. The event was held at the All Nations Evangelism Ministries in Makurdi, the state capital and Ortom had taken the first Bible reading.
He
was also invited to make some remarks, before the closing prayers and
benediction. Those who expected him to return to Government House, Makurdi to
fete guests in the spirit of the occasion, however, were disappointed.
He virtually commandeered officials of the Benue State Emergency
Management Agency (BESEMA), to take him on a tour of sections of the state
capital which were affected by the water overflow. The development had
precipitated the dislodgement of his people in parts and the destruction of
their farmlands and by extension their livelihoods.
Ortom was dressed in white and green blazers and trousers, in the
spirit of independence. The kind of impromptu tour he had just elected to
undertake would have been better suited to jeans trousers and rain boots. The
imperative for him to appraise the situation himself as the pragmatist that he
is, however, had no time for sartorial correctness.
Ortom
toured Wadata Market, Rice Mill, Awe Street (Wurukum), the designated park and
headquarters of Benue Links Transport Company, all the way to Kucha Utube. He
inspected the environs of Benue State University Teaching Hospital, all in the
state capital. Makurdi was effectively underwater. Besides Makurdi Local
Government Area, Guma, Gwer West, Katsina-Ala and Agatu, are other provinces
held by the throat, by flooding.
Ortom was accompanied by officials of his administration and
federal parliamentarians. Bem Mzondo and John Dyegh, representing Makurdi/Guma,
and Gboko Tarka federal constituencies; Ortom’s Chief of Staff, Tivlumun Nyitse
and the Director of the Benue State Emergency Management Agency, (BESEMA),
Emmanuel Shior, were on the governor’s delegation.
Felix Atume, a Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Engineering, (FA
Eng), was also on the tour. They were briefed that River Benue, Nigeria’s
second largest water body, was one of those negatively impacted by the release
of excess water from Lagdo Dam in neighbouring Cameroun. The Lagdo burst also
afflicted River Katsina-Ala, the second largest in Benue State, precipitating
developments similar to the Makurdi experience.
An
estimated 126,000 people from 24,000 households have been unsettled by the
floods. The state government has temporarily relocated them into a camp for
Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Makurdi. This expectedly compounds the
IDP situation in the state, hitherto precipitated by Fulani herdsmen’s untoward
activities in the state, with makeshift structures housing them, dotted around
the state.
From estimates his constituents numbering over a million, as
having been long uprooted from their homelands. In addition to this reality, no
less than 5000 hectares of cultivated rice and other crops have been destroyed
by the recent water burst.
The macroeconomics of this will impact food sufficiency and
security, in the coming weeks and months. Benue State is also renowned for the
massive cultivation of yams, sorghum, sesame seeds, groundnuts, oranges and
mangoes, among others.
Governor
Ortom alluded to the earlier pledge of the Federal Government to dredge River
Benue, a promise which remains unkept to date. Former Transportation Minister
under President Muhammadu Buhari’s regime, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, while
defending his ministry’s budget before the national parliament in 2017, said
matter-of-factly that the river will be dredged.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on a visit to Benue State later in
2017, re-echoed Amaechi, adding that drainage channels will be created for
effective mitigation of water fluxes. A contract worth N34 billion was
thereafter reportedly awarded for the dredging, which has remained unexecuted
five years on.
Whether this was stalled by superior professional guidance about
the challenges of levelling the preponderance of rock outcrops in the bed of
the river, or by feasibility studies on the economic viability of the exercise,
has not been established.
Ortom
believes, however, that the apathy towards the project is consistent with the
laissez faire disposition to everything about Benue State in the eyes of the
Federal Government. He challenged the legislators representing the state in the
National Assembly to dig into the issue to ascertain the actual status of the
said contract which has remained a ding-dong affair for five long years. He
observed that a similar disaster occurred in 2012, exactly 10 years ago, and
faulted the government’s capacity in disaster anticipation and planning for its
amelioration.
Offering his perspectives as an expert in engineering, Atume noted
that the ferocity of the floods was heightened by blocked channels which
ordinarily are the natural pathways for water. He observed that in certain
instances, flood plains had been abused and converted to residential estates.
In many such instances, water he noted was an eventual nemesis,
which came back to haunt its abusers. Atume alluded to the massive silting and
sedimentation of the river bed, and the irresponsible practice of pollution by
way of indiscriminate dumping of non-biodegradable material, especially
plastics.
Also
a Fellow of the Nigerian Society of Engineers, (FNSE), Atume noted: “Water
moves with intense force and serious velocity. It is very heavy, very powerful.
It must be allowed to flow or it will create its own outlets.”
According to him, the government must muster the political will to
do the right thing in addressing the situation, because it will have to take
tough decisions in some cases.
“Government has to address itself to outright demolition of
structures where natural courses have been obstructed,” he said. “Channels will
then have to be designed taking into consideration existing geophysical
peculiarities, to allow water free movement.” Atume also expressed concern
about a critical mass of the Lekki span of Lagos State.
He’s worried that much of the primordial water body was
momentarily suppressed in the name of reclamation, for purposes of physical
development. Water, he noted, will someday, always find its level.
The
Benue State governor called on emergency and relief Ministries, Departments and
Agencies, (MDAs), to come to the immediate aid of the state in assuaging the
plight of his people, as he addressed the media at Kucha Utebe: “Having
physically gone round the various locations affected by the most recent floods,
it is clear to me that we need help from everywhere.
From the Ministry of Emergency and Disaster Management; the
National Emergency Management Agency, (NEMA) and other such bodies, we need all
the help we can get at this trying period. Support from donor agencies will be
much appreciated as well.” According to Ortom, the present experience cannot be
solely managed by the state government, in a milieu where dwindling resources
are impacting the seamless functioning of the state.
A delegation of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, (NGF) on Friday,
October 7, met with Buhari in the State House, Abuja. Led by the outgoing
chairman of the body, Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State, they drew the attention of
President Muhammadu Buhari to the flood challenge across the country and
requested the prompt and decisive intervention of the Federal Government.
Buhari advised the forum to engage with the Water Resources
Minister, Suleiman Hussein Adamu, to articulate an action plan and revert accordingly
so that the Federal Government “will see what can be done.” How this suggestion
will ameliorate the urgent, present, pressing predicament of the people of
Benue State, given the snail pace of bureaucracy in our governance
superstructure, is yet to be seen.
*Olusunle,
PhD, poet, journalist, scholar and author, is a member of the Nigerian Guild of
Editors (NGE).
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