On Tuesday, the 10th day of September 2024, Nigerians woke up to some pictures and videos showing a terrifying flood disaster in one of their states’ capital cities – Maiduguri.
In several viral pictures/videos circulated in the media, we saw how much of Maiduguri town was flowing in water, how some residents were helplessly trapped in submerged or collapsed buildings and how some stranded zoo animals wandered about in the floods.
As soon as the pictures and videos hit the internet with several reports of people being drowned in the flood, our government officials, in their usual reactionary and hypocritical manner, rushed out to issue defensive statements about the flood, presenting the flood as an unanticipated or unavoidable disaster.
The Premium Times quoted the speech made by Nigeria’s Vice President, Kashim Shettima, who while speaking at the 17th Annual Banking and Finance Conference (CIBN), attempted to downplay the culpability of his government in the flood disaster when he claimed the flood in Maiduguri is not different from other floods witnessed in places like Bayelsa and Sokoto.
By this, the VP subtly insinuated that the flood was a natural or common phenomenon which was bound to happen from time to time.
Aside from issuing defensive statements, some government officials like Governor Zulum of Borno State preferred hypocritical drama as a damage control strategy.
Following the occurrence of the flood, we saw dramatic pictures of Governor Zulum standing in the middle of the flood waters with funny captions like “Governor Zulum Identifies with Flood Victims”, “Zulum Pledges Support for Flood Victims”, etc.
Unmoved by their theatrics, a section of the country who are possessed with critical minds insists on asking the important questions: Why did the flood happen? Was it a natural disaster or human-induced? Was it preventable? Did the government(s) do what was expected of it?
Of course, I know that disasters happen even in the best-governed countries. Yes, I know this, but I also know that some disasters are avoidable and that the flood currently drowning people and damaging properties in Maiduguri was very much avoidable.
All the reports so far made about the flood agree that the flood happened when the banks of a dam known as “Alau” broke due to excessive in-flow of water into it.
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The Alau Dam was built in 1986 in the Konduga community in Maiduguri for irrigation purposes, but it also helped control the water level of a nearby river known as the Ngadda River which from time to time swells with excess inflow of water from Lake Chad.
From the above brief history and description of the Alau Dam, it is clear that this danger of the Dam or the Ngadda River overflowing its banks and flooding nearby communities has been in existence as far back as the year 1986 when the Alau Dam was constructed.
Even if the government of Borno State or Nigeria pretends not to be aware of this danger in 1986 when the Dam was built, they cannot deny realizing the danger about 8 years later (1994) when the dam overflowed its banks and flooded surrounding communities nor can they deny not acknowledging this danger in the year 2012 when the same Dam flooded Maiduguri, killing about 363 people and displacing 3.8 million residents.
More unpardonably, before the occurrence of the current flood, the government of Borno State received several complaints and warnings from the farmers who work near the Dam about the surging level of water in the Dam and the looming danger of an overflow.
According to a news article on Saraha Reporters, seven days before the occurrence of the flood, the government of Borno State was forced to send a delegation of its officials led by Alhaji Bukar Tijani, the Secretary to the State Government, to visit the Dam to confirm the complaints but Alhaji Bukar and his team of delegation ended giving the residents a false sense of safety by their declaration that ‘there is no cause for alarm’.
Meanwhile, another report has emerged which indicts the government of Nigeria and which exposes the destructive effect of corruption in Nigeria.
The International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR) published an investigative report conducted by Kehinde Ogunyale which alleges that the federal government of Nigeria released a total of over 231 million naira between 2018 and 2024 for rehabilitation and repairs of the Alau dam.
If Kehinde’s report is anything to go by, your guess is as good as mine regarding the whereabouts of the released funds and the fate of the intended rehabilitation.
In case you’ve been sniffing around to uncover the hands behind the devastating flood in Maiduguri, look no further. It is the same people who have been pumping and discharging other drowning waters – insurgency, terrorism, inflation, poverty, hunger, and much more – on the people of Nigeria.
