Nigerian politics does not inspire. So the nation does not have a flood management strategy? People, how have they been spending the billions of Naira mapped for ecological funds? In a country with a rainforest region with erosion problems everywhere, one would have expected that as part of spending that money, the nation would have developed a flood management strategy as a component of a comprehensive playbook on managing erosion.
When I was in FUTO, there was a Center for Erosion Studies staffed by German experts. It was located at the back of the old SEET Building, sharing a building with Works & Maintenance. After one of those major strikes, upon return, the Center had been closed: the foreign experts had gone, possibly with their intervention funds and knowledge exchanges.
The minister has 90 days to do this; I hope that ASUU can work with him: “As Nigeria grapples with devastating floods that have ravaged homes and means of livelihood across the country, President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered the Minister of Water Resources, Suleiman Adamu, to develop a preventive plan within 90 days.”
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As that happens, I call my alma mater, FUTO, to start an option under Environmental Engineering/Civil Engineering with Climate Change Management Engineering. This option will prepare young people with capabilities to design, develop and implement necessary climate change mitigation protocols in Nigeria and beyond. We’re at that moment now in the world – and FUTO can pioneer it.
And Mr Adamu can allocate funds to set up this type of program in selected schools as part of his plan. His plan must have a private sector incentivisation roadmap where building resilience to floods is designed to be good for business.
A statement issued by the presidential spokesperson, Garba Shehu, on Monday, said Adamu has been directed to lead and coordinate with the Ministries of Environment and Transportation as well as State Governments to develop a comprehensive plan of action for preventing flood disaster in the country.
Shehu in the statement said the President’s directive was conveyed to the Minister in a letter signed by his Chief of Staff, Prof Ibrahim Gambari. The statement said that Buhari regularly received updates on the flooding situation in the country, and has restated his commitment towards addressing the challenges caused by the disaster in the country.
Buhari Gives Minister of Water Resources 90 Days to Develop Flood Preventive Plan
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The ecological funds is just like ‘security votes’, they are a share of the national cake, and you don’t need to return the funds once received, irrespective of whether you have ecological/security issues or not. The country is spending-oriented, and not value-driven in any form, nobody ever accounts for anything. Who has ever cared about throughput? Once politicians show you the roads and bridges they constructed, as their ‘legacy projects’, nobody questions value for money. So it doesn’t matter if you spent N50B on N10B bridge, as long as the bridge is standing, you have done well…
Again, the current flooding menace is not the usual ‘Climate Change’ choreography. This particular flooding is well known, the cause is well known too, so before we begin another wild goose chase, we must first do the needful. It happened 10 years ago in 2012, so do we expect to have the counter dam in place before 2032? That is where to begin, and not by producing lengthy documents nobody will ever read, let alone implement.
It’s hard to see a country filled with indolent and delinquent creatures like the geographic space called Nigeria, unfortunately it has been institutionalized.
Now, a minister has 90 days to deliver, more money for the boys.