In order to address the nation’s persistent flooding, stakeholders in the oil-rich Delta State have urged the federal and state governments to adopt the Netherlands’ approach to flood risk management techniques.
The request was made most recently at the Federal University of Petroleum Resources (FUPRE), Centre for Sustainable Development, Ugbomro, Uvwie Local Government Area of Delta State, where Comrade Sunny Ofehe, a Nigerian environmental rights activist based in the Netherlands, was decorated as a fellow.
Ofehe was recognized by the institution’s CSD as one of the few after Dr. Newton Jibunoh, a Nigerian explorer, environmentalist, and historian known as the “Desert Warrior,” and was given the honour of being named a distinguished fellow of the centre.
Organized by the institution’s Centre for Sustainable Development as the maiden stakeholders’ forum/discussion series of the center, the event had a lecture tagged, ‘Climate Change & Flooding: The Niger Delta Experience, Causes, Defence & Response’.
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The event, which was held at the ICT centre of the institution, also witnessed the planting of a tree by the recipient as a symbol of his commitment to a greener environment, one of the cardinal goals of the Centre for Sustainable Development, FUPRE.
Delivering the only lecture of the event as a special guest speaker, Ofehe urged the federal and state governments to use the Netherlands flood risk management model to tackle perennial flooding confronting the nation.
He lauded the management and officials of the center for packaging the event which he said would enable stakeholders proffered solutions to the perennial issues of flooding confronting the Niger Delta region.
While thanking the institution for finding him worthy of the fellowship, Ofehe maintained that one of the ways to deal with the issues of flooding is to protect the shoreline and also dredge the rivers for commercial purposes.
He said that just as the Dutch were able to transform their ecological disadvantage into an agricultural advantage through the use of technology to create irrigation systems, pathways, artificial canals and dams to force the flow of water, the federal and state governments can, through public-private partnership arrangements, develop the God-given natural canals, creeks that dot the Niger Delta into mega economic hub.
Story adapted from The Sun
