Dr. Clement Onyeaso is the director-general, Nigeria Hydrological Service Agency (NIHSA). In this interview, he speaks about the coming rainy season and precautionary measures to minimise adverse impacts:
Charity Nwakudu, Abuja
You have consistently raised the alarm over flooding in Nigeria, but we still see people/places revaged by floods. What could be the reason?
It is quite disappointing. People, most often, don’t regard our alarms or they think that we exaggerate the issue of flooding, until the waters come. Obviously, there is this nonchalant attitude people put up when it comes to flood warnings. They are not ready to relocate in some cases because they are extremely comfortable where they are even when it’s dangerous to them. It baffles us as an agency that, annually, we come out early to sensitise the public with regard to flooding and, at the end of the day, we record several cases of damage and loss of lives and property. It is really not encouraging at all but what we should understand is that we are talking of reduction. You may not completely eradicate it but the subject matter is that of reduction. For example, in the issue of climate change, where disaster occurs, we talk of risk reduction, how to reduce the risk and the challenges, but you cannot stop it completely. The sensitization is aimed at reducing the negative effects of flooding. We are going around to inform people to clean their drainages, remove rubble from streams and rivers, among several others. We have begun very early in the year before the the onset of rainy season. Nigerians should prepare adequately because it’s better to be overprepared than not being prepared. There is a reasonable time to do that before the rain sets in. Flood is a natural environmental phenomenon that can be greatly accelerated by human-induced activities. With the increasing global populatlon and the expanding activities of man, it is believed that flooding will continue to persist, and, therefore, there is the need to control human activities, environmental adjustment and purposefully adopting actions in certain areas that would make adjustment possible. Some flood events may cause little or no damage, but some may result in major disasters involving structural and erosion damage, disruption of socio-economic activities, loss of lives and property, displacement of people, destruction of agricultural land and contamination of water and environment in general. The best time to prepare for flooding is now, which is the dry season, you can see clear at this point in time, you can clear the drainages, remove the sand that filled them and do proper construction, not to wait till the rain is already here and you can’t even see well. This is the right period for Nigerians to begin to prepare for the 2020 flooding, it is always better to overprepared, it is a better thing to be on the path of caution, it is better to overestimate the capacity of your enemy, if we overprepare to receive flooding in 2020, we have nothing to lose, if such magnitude of flood does not come. This is the best time to prepare so that, when the prediction is made public sometime in April, they should heed it.
Compared to 2019, what is the degree of rainfall expected in 2020?
According to the 2020 Seasonal Rainfall Prediction (SRP) made public recently by the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet), February 24 and June 22 are the predicted onset of rainfall in the South-South and northern states, respectively, while the respective predicted cessation dates are December 28 and September 26. This implies that Nigeria is likely to experience longer period of rainy season in 2020 compared to year 2019. This, however, does not automatically translate to more flooding incidents, seeing that there are lots of other factors like high rainfall intensity of longer duration and many anthropogenic activities as already listed above. Also, the two trans-boundary rivers, Niger and Benue, which take their sources from outside Nigeria, contribute tremendously to flooding in Nigeria.
It was once reported that you said Nigerians should prepare for more flooding. What do you have to say about that?
The Nigrian Hydrological Agency has not made any presentation with regard to the amount of flooding expected in 2020. So, the agency didn’t mention anything about the the amount of flooding whether it will be high or low compared to previous years. So, as at today, we are still working and very soon we will come on air to tell Nigerians about the expected quantity or amount of flooding. For now, we are only sensitising Nigerians on the need to be prepared ahead of time.
What is your relationship with state governments on the issue of flooding?
Ours is to sensitise them on dangers ahead. We give advice to state governments on flooding. We always invite them when we are making public forecasts or predictions of flooding. We involve the state ministries of water resources, ministry of environment, state emergency management agencies. We normally bring them on board as we announce the level of flooding expected in a year. We do that every year and, apart from that, we try as much as possible within the resource we have to go down to some states, bring some key stakeholders together and talk to them based on the peculiarities of their location. We hope to cover more states this time around in 2020. So, we are trying to relate with states, but our challenge is that they seem not to adhere to our warnings; we would continue to reach out to them from time to time.
What is the state of Nigerian dams and what is the ideal number of dams for a country like Nigeria?
We don’t have enough dams in Nigeria, compared to other countries of same size and water magnitude resources that we have. I don’t have the record of how many dams we are supposed to have but the more dams we have in Nigeria, the better for us. Dams serve several purposes, like hydropower generation, flood control, irrigation facilities, fisheries and for educational activities. There are dams that we can build that can supply electricity to small communities, about 1,000 megawatts. It can also be built for use in schools.
Last year, Cameroon released Lagdo dam and you said it was responsible for the unprecedented flooding in Nigeria. Could you throw more light on the matter?
There is a subsistence memorandum of understanding between Nigeria and Cameroon with regard to Lagdo dam in Cameroon: in the event they need to release water from the dam, they should give Nigeria adequate notice before they do that. That MoU was signed in 2016, the processes began years back after the 2012 flooding in Nigeria when they opened their dam. Last year, we maintained contact with them to know what was happening offstream because our major challenge in Nigeria is that we don’t have our own dam on River Benue that could have checkmated whatever is coming from Cameroon. So, we keep regular touch with them during the rainy season, July, August and September. We kept doing that but when the rains had already ceased in Nigeria, at a point in time we started seeing that Adamawa State was getting flooded through River Benue and I personally maintained contact with relevant authorities in Cameroon connecting to the dam. They kept assuring us that there was no water release until November 1, 2019, I was personally informed by the authorities that they opened the dam on October 10, 2019, and the water was flowing up to October 31, 2019, which was three weeks that was what caused the flooding in Adamawa, Taraba, Benue, Kogi and down the southern parts of Nigeria when the rainy season had ceased in Nigeria. But the issue is being addressed at a diplomatic level between the two countries.
What are Nigerian rivers connected to flooding?
Flood occurs when rivers or channels that contain water are overloaded. Once the capacity is exceeded, then the places that are dry will begin to have water stagnated upon them, no matter how high. The River Niger and River Benue, which are the major rivers in Nigeria, have connections with other rivers we have in Nigeria, like the Imo, Gongola and so on. At a point, when the Benue and Niger rivers become overwhelmed, instead of these other rivers to be flowing into the bigger rivers, they will be supplying them water. The rivers that are supposed to flow into the Imo River, for instance, Imo River when it becomes too full so that, instead of receiving from the smaller rivers, it starts pushing water into those smaller rivers and that is how the environment gets flooded and that is what causes river flooding. It usually occurs during the peak of the rainy season in Nigeria.