Group calls on Buhari to treat 2022 flood as national emergency crisis

A group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to declare the ravaging floods across the country as a national emergency  crisis.

HURIWA’s National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, in a statement, decried that flood in states like Kogi, Benue, Nasarawa, Anambra, Delta, Bayelsa, Yobe, Sokoto, have wreaked devastating havoc, including destruction of thousands of hectares of farmlands, displaced thousands of residents, and killed hundreds of people in 2022.

The group demanded the Federal Government, the Humanitarian and Disaster Management Ministry, as well as federal agencies like the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), to evolve strategies to prevent further disaster that may be caused by floods and provide succour to displaced victims and those who lost their means of livelihood when their farms were swamped by the floods.

The group cited a report of NEMA indicating over 300 people have so far been killed in flood disaster across Nigeria in 2022, with over 50 flood disaster alerts received by the agency on a daily basis, and in over 100 communities.

Beside NEMA’s statistics, the group noted that Yobe State Emergency Management Agency last Wednesday disclosed that over 31,000 households had been affected by floods in 255 communities across the 17 local government areas in the state.

NEMA issued strong warning that the 2022 flood disaster will be worse than that of 2012 where at least 363 people were killed and over 2.1 million people were displaced by floods that ravaged different parts of Nigeria.

According to HURIWA, “Sadly, the lack of proactiveness of the Federal Government and the concerned ministries, departments, and agencies particularly NEMA, has caused Nigeria huge losses so far this year with over 300 persons killed by floods and over 100 communities submerged and the people displaced.

“The job of FG, NEMA and others is not to reel devastating tragic statistics but to forestall disasters of this nature because the current realities weren’t accidental as weather forecasts must have revealed.”

HURIWA’s Onwubiko lamented that thousands of travelers and residents of Lokoja, Kogi State, are currently stranded as the city has been overrun by heavy flooding because the 196 kilometres Lokoja-Abuja road was submerged by flooding, consequently, paralysing economic activities, including food supply chain from the North to the South after the Niger and Benue rivers broke their banks.

The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) noted that the prevailing fuel scarcity in Abuja and the neighbouring states was caused by lack of access road by fuel trucks in the FCT through the flooded Lokoja roads.

HURIWA’s Onwubiko, therefore, demanded: “President Muhammadu Buhari and the National Assembly to declare the floods all across the country as a NATIONAL EMERGENCY and call on the United Nations environmental agency for urgent assistance as NEMA has failed spectacularly  in its mandate as an emergency agency going by the record losses – both materially and the number of lives lost across the country to floods.”

The group protested: “NEMA seems to be domiciled just in the North of Nigeria and not very much is heard of it in Anambra and Dekta States for instance whereby the floods have unleashed devastating environmental menace and have rendered hundreds of thousands of residents of these states internally displaced and homeless. We urge NEMA to demonstrate equity and provide relief materials equitably all across Nigeria because NEMA is not Northern Environmental Management Agency but Nigerian Environmental Management Agency.

“The flooding has resulted in the proliferation of internally displaced camps in places like Yobe, Anambra and Delta State and NEMA as well as the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs have failed woefully to distribute relief items to the thousands of flood victims in these places and most specifically in the South of Nigeria after failing to avert the disaster in the first place.”