Flooding has always been a common natural disaster that occurs year after year, especially during rainy season. This is an overfl ow of water that submerges land that is usually dry, or is a covering by water land not normally covered by water.
It may occur due to an accumulation of rainfall on saturated ground in an area flood. Nigeria is one of the West African countries that had always experienced flooding in years back whether natural or manmade flooding especially during artificial dam opening. Let’s look at the Cameroon dam which is called Lagdo Reservoir. It is located 50 km south of the city of Garua on the Benue river. In years back, water released from the dam flooded areas around the dam opening including Adamawa state in Nigeria, the flooding resulted in over 10 deaths and loss of properties worth of thousands of dollars.
A bigger effect of the flooding is however at the lower Benue river region where more than 10,000 homes have been submerged. This has left more than 10,000 hectares of farmland flooded and streets of Makurdi town occupied by crocodile, among other dangerous creeping creatures. Natural flooding occurs due to heavy rainfall.
There is need for citizens to embrace and pay more attention to anything that can enhance the level of flooding. As the rainy season is fast approaching, in my opinion and observation there are certain things that citizens living in a community need to do in order to reduce or terminate totally the occurrence of flooding in their community. First, let’s be mindful of how we dump refuse.
Most of the time we don’t care about where to dump refuse and we dump it in waterways which blocks free flow of water and course flooding. Secondly, building of houses close to river bank, and sometimes because there is river bank failure and when the river is full flood occur. Thirdly, citizens make sure that there are drainages in their community, which is the artificial removal of surface water and subsurface water from an area. Government has great role to play on the issue of flooding especially the issue of Cameroon dam. Government should provide solution to that and also provide drainages to its citizens in their respective environments and communities.
The press has always cried out to warn the nation about impending doom for the nation to take precaution and avoid the disaster that will follow if things were neglected and left as they were. Let’s be honest and sincere to help ourselves in order to enjoy a good environment. By Ezra Musa, 300 Level Student, Department of Mass Communication, University of Maiduguri
