Floods: As Poverty Exacerbates Household Vulnerability

 By Victor Okeke

This year’s tail-end rains in Nigeria have been marked by devastating floods. At least 600 people have died and 1.3 million displaced from their homes. Heavy rains combined with poor urban planning have made parts of Nigeria more susceptible to flooding. Evidence has shown that women, the poor, and uneducated are most vulnerable to floods.

Gender, poverty, and education are interrelated and they have indirect effects on vulnerability in flood disasters. Around the River Niger Bridge which joins Lagos to Onitsha and the rest of eastern Nigeria, sizable portions of surrounding communities have been submerged under water, crippling economic activity for many small traders and farmers.

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.

Buhari, Aso Rock’s Non-Essential Staff, Evacuated To London

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

In his kairotic moment at the dispatch box in the British House of Commons on January 31, 2022, Sir Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party since 2020, gave the then British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, a full dressing down. It was a remarkable speech. Johnson “is a man without shame… damaging everyone and everything around him along the way,” Sir Starmer said. What was Boris Johnson’s crime?

*Buhari

At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic when British people were asked to make the most heart wrenching sacrifices, which Starmer described as “a terrible collective trauma, endured by all, enjoyed by none,” a time during which funerals were missed and dying relatives were left unvisited, Johnson, whose administration made the rules and who should lead by the force of personal example, routinely broke the rules.