The Nasarawa State Emergency Management Agency (NASEMA) has encouraged people around rivers and in local government areas that are prone to flooding to take precautions against flooding and rigorously follow forecasts for 2023.
While addressing journalists in Lafia, the capital of the North Central region, the agency’s director general, Mr. Zachary Allumaga, made the call.
He claimed that the flood predictions for 2023 made by the Nigerian Meteorological Agency and other players in the field of climate change, specifically flooding, indicate that there may be flooding in the months of March and April 2023.
The prediction, according to Allumaga, also called for another flood to occur in the months of August, September, and October.
He explained that because of its border with the River Benue in the southern part of the state, Nasarawa State, regrettably like a few others, was vulnerable to flooding; as a result, anytime the river rose, it had an impact on the state.
He claimed that in light of the forecast, the Agency has begun educating and informing riverine communities and local government areas at risk of flooding about the need to take precautions and be on guard.
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The director-general specifically urged people who constructed buildings near waterways to demolish them so that water may flow freely and easily.
“The agency’s duty is both preventive and curative, having been warned that is real and is going to happen, we sensitize them; this is likely to happen to get ready, when it happens we can evacuate them to the high grounds we have identified.
“Our messages are particularly directed at people who had experienced flood, rain and wind storms in their communities, and those areas we know that are likely to happen as a result of environmental degradation. Those who like farming by the river should stop it now and look for somewhere else to farm because flood is likely to wash them off, it happened last year when yam and rice farms were washed away,” he said.
On recent wind and rain storm destruction in Nassarawa local government, he said GovAbdullahi Sule, had visited the two communities of Nguchu and Ara where more than 100 houses were affected and donated N 10 million to each of the communities.
Allumaga said the Agency had already gone there to assess the level of destruction with a view to assisting affected households with building materials to rebuild their houses.
The director-general said arrangements had been concluded to return the victims of Doka bombing who were currently taking temporary shelter in some communities in the three LGAs of Keana, Obi and Doma.
“We have identified where they came from and wrote that they should be relocated; we are waiting for the money to be released from the office of Accountant General of the state, then we can take them back home,” he added.
Story adapted from VON
