The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMET), and the Nigerian Hydrological Services Agency (NIHSA) have predicted a high probability of flooding across the country as a result of heavy rainfall in the months ahead.
The agencies, which released their 2023 Seasonal Climate Prediction and Annual Flood Outlookearly in the year, said they were taking proactive steps to downscale and possibly avert impending flood disasters.
NEMA’s Director General Mustapha Ahmed announced that a team of experts from NIMET, NIHSA and NEMA had been deployed in the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory to handle any eventuality.
Ahmed spoke in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital, at the opening of a sensitisation workshop on the downscaling of disaster early warning measures to the grassroots for effective life-saving early actions during the 2023 rainy season.
According to him, the result indicated that there would be early onset of rainfall and a high probability of flooding across the country, hence the need to take proactive measures to mitigate the envisaged disaster.
“The vital documents contained meteorological forecasts indicating early onset of rainfall and high probability of flooding across the country during the year.
“Earlier, as part of our disaster risk communication, we wrote letters to all governors and responsible partners, drawing their attention to imminent floods and associated secondary hazards during the rainy season to avoid a repeat of what we experienced last year.
“In 2022, Nigeria experienced the most devastating flood in our national history with more than four million people affected, over two million persons displaced and a record death of 665 Nigerians. The flood also caused damages and destruction to about 355,986 houses and 944,989 hectares of farmlands”, Ahmed said.
He added: “It is on this premise that NEMA, drawing from its mandate of disaster risk management, decided to take the initiative of partnering NIHSA and NiMet to downscale early warning alerts to states, local government authorities and communities at the risk of flood disasters and associated hazards.
“We are deploying the same experts from NEMA, NiMet and NIHSA to all the states of the federation and the FCT to downscale and take the early warning message to all the relevant end users across socio-economic sectors.
“I am very confident that this initiative will enable all responsible actors to take risk-informed decisions to enable them match early warning with early action, support disaster risk management, safeguard national food security and engender sustainable socio-economic growth in Nigeria”.
Akwa Ibom State Deputy Governor Akon Eyakenyi said the state would not be caught off-guard as it had made preparations to combat flood disasters.
Eyakenyi said the government has identified the need to build camps for Internally Displaced Persons in the 31 Local Government Areas of the state as well as train personnel on disaster management.
Governor Umo Eno, who declared the programme open, announced that his administration had donated a warehouse and offices to NEMA.
