150 killed in Niger province due to torrential rain

Torrential rain in the northern Nigerian state of Niger killed 150 people, and left thousands homeless. It is not yet the height of the rainy season in Nigeria. People feel that the enormous flooding due to the rain must be due to a dam burst upstream.

But the destruction has left the people wrecked, and the authorities scrambling to rescue people and provide for them. More people must have died even as bodies are swept away in the Niger River. Mokwa, with a population of 400,000, is the main town in the Niger state, the fourth largest in the country, and it serves as a transit point of commerce between the north and the south.

Like many urban habitations in most developing countries, Mokwa is concrete jungle with an inadequate drainage system. And so are the other urban habitations in the province and in the country. The Nigerian Red Cross Society is engaged in rescue operations along with the provincial authorities.

Ibrahim Audu Husseini, spokesperson for the Niger State Emergency Management Agency, said that at least 3,018 people have been displaced and 265 houses destroyed. Gideon Adamu, head of the Red Cross in the Niger state, said 121 injured people were in hospital and 100 were missing.

Adamu said, “We can’t give up the search as long as there are families crying out.” Farida Awalu, who lost seven of her children in the deluge from a family of 16, said, “My hope is to see the remaining bodies and give them a decent burial and have closure.” Four of her children have been found and buried.

Flood risk analyst Ugonna Nkwunonwo of the University of Nigeria says, “The amount of rain you expect in a year could probably come in one or two months, and people are not prepared for that kind of rainfall.”

Floods are the result of two things. One, excessive rainfall, and second lack of drainage systems in the urban centres along the course of the river. The tried-and-tested method is that of building dams. But it has been found that the dams are not much of help in the face of heavy rain because the rain can overrun the dams and unleash destruction along the way.

It would require an alert system, and properly planned cities which can absorb the rain with the help of properly laid out drainage systems. But these are never in place because priorities of those in power are always dictated by the compulsions of power tussles. Wrong and short-term solutions are favoured, which cause more damage to the people and to the terrain.

Many of the experts have now begun to blame all natural disasters on that ubiquitous cause, climate change. Climate change is a real problem and challenge and it needs to be tackled at many levels. But there are local vagaries of weather which mostly dictate things like rainfall, and it is necessary for the local governments to be able to deal with them. Precautionary measures are in the hands of the administration. With improved meteorological data, it is possible to predict rainfall, and even local storms.

Local authorities say that they have warned people to shift to higher ground from the river bank, but the poor people cannot make the move as easily as an administrative order is issued. The emergency measures taken after a natural disaster strikes should be taken before the disaster happens.

The people impacted by natural disasters are almost always the very poor people. They need to be pulled out of disaster zones before calamity strikes. It is this measure that is lacking most of the time. Everyone knows what needs to be done to prevent disaster. But it never gets done, unfortunately.