Federal Government, Apathy And Flood In Niger Delta

 By Braeyi Ekiye 

Understanding how to use political power constructively makes a difference in leadership. Therefore, political power and the use of it can be broken into the negative and the positive. Such use of positive political power, imbued with the desire to evoke regulatory command in the process of giving leadership, is capable of galvanising a people to achieve set goals.

Furthermore, such use of power has the kinetic energy of firing previously frustrated and helpless people during times of harrowing challenges, such as the recent flood in parts of Nigeria, particularly in the Niger Delta, including the oil and gas rich Bayelsa State. 

I doubt if any Nigerian leader led from the front in this regard as the governor of Bayelsa State, Senator Douye Diri did when the flood came rushing into the state like a thief, consuming properties, destabilising human traffic, and causing dislocations of unimaginable proportion. Bayelsa State was cut off completely from her neighbouring states to the east and to the west.

Nigerians Can’t Breathe!

 By Owei Lakemfa

Bayelsa State was for weeks submerged by floods which damaged or washed away bridges and roads, homes and farms, power transformers, and hospitals, and displaced 99 percent of its over 2.5 million people. Some deaths were recorded with the living clinging to life while the buried could not safely remain in their abode as the floods covered or washed away graves. The only means of reaching the state was either by air or water.

State Governor Douye Diri, a fortnight ago, cried out that despite international concerns and desperate pleas, neither the Federal Government nor its agencies had sent relief materials. He was specific that although the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, Hajiya Sadiya Umar-Farouk claimed to have sent relief materials, these had not been received.