By Abdulwasiu Hassan
Abubakar Umar was two weeks away from harvesting 300 bags of rice from his three hectares farm in Nigeria’s north=eastern state of Adamawa, when the country’s record flood of 2022 hit.
“Honestly, my reaction was crazy because this was the first time I was experiencing flooding on a farmland,” the self-described part-time farmer said while speaking with TRT Afrika.
The 2022 flood killed 665 people, injured 3,181 people, affected 4.4 million people, displaced 2.4 million people, destroyed over 944,000 farms and damaged over 355,000 houses, according to government figures.
The destructions happened in most states of the country - in the north and south - hitting rural communities and major cities including the capital Abuja and the commercial hub Lagos.
The north-eastern state of Adamawa which hosts Mr Abubakar’s farm is one of the 32 states the country’s hydrological service agency is projecting would experience a flood in the year 2023.
Out of the country’s 36 states, some locations in 32 states are at risk of the flood while locations in 35 states are projected to experience a mild flood, according to the Annual Flood Outlook report put together by the country’s hydrological service agency.
Floods in Nigeria occur annually during rainy season when high amount of rainfall is recorded and the country’s eastern neighbour, Cameroon releases water from its Ladgo dam to avoid it being broken by large volumes of water.
Though the release of water from the dam is done after warning, it results in flooding which affects people and properties in Nigeria.
Flooding can get worse
The year 2022 flood was Nigeria’s worst flooding with devastating effects surpassing the 2012 flood.
“The reality is that this year may witness floods similar to what occurred last year if not more,” Mustapha Habib Ahmed, head of Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said at a meeting on climate-related disaster preparedness and mitigation strategies.
In the wake of last year's devastating floods, the government inaugurated the Presidential Committee for the Development of Comprehensive Plan of Action to help the country prepare better for possible re-occurrence of such disasters.
Since then, the presidential committee has been moving around the country evaluating the situation on ground and advising on how best to mitigate impact of flood disasters in the country.
The authorities including the hydrological agency, metrological agency and emergency management agency have been preparing to mitigate the effect the country’s annual flood is likely to have on Nigerians in the 2023.
But in previous years, warnings by these agencies were largely not heeded - with the authorities lacking concrete plans to evacuate flood-prone communities and the vulnerable residents either unwilling or unable to relocate.
Manzo Ezekiel, spokesperson Nigeria’s emergency management agency told TRT Afrika that the agency is following experts’ advice on how best to confront the disaster in such a way that it will have minimal effect on people this year.
“We have written to all states the flood is expected to affect and have been making advocacy visits to the communities projected to be affected by the flood to advise them on what to do,” he said.
But some of the government agency’s advocacy on advising people have not reached everyone.
Nervous farmers strategise
Muhammad Abdulazeez, a resident of flood-prone area of the northwestern city of Kaduna, says though, he listens to radio, he has not heard sensitization message about flood on local radio stations yet this year.
Muhammad said once rains start, people living in his part of the city would be taking turn clearing waterways to avoid flooding.
Community members like Amir Muhammad Hardo, in Jigawa, one of the worst hit states during the 2022 floods, say farmers in his area are nervous ahead of this year's rainy season because of potential loss of their produce to floods.
Farmers in the north-western part are not alone in this thinking.
“We cannot stop farming because of flooding, rather what we intend to do is to see how we can counter it either by finding another location or may be planting ahead of it such that we can cultivate before the flood comes,” Abubakar a rice farmer told TRT Afrika.
He said farmers in his state of Adamawa have noticed that the annual flood happens between August and early December. Hence, they avoid planting around the period.
“What we intend to do for rice farmers is that we want to plant early such that before August may be sometime in July or late July or maybe at most first week of August, you would have harvested your rice,” he said.
“Maize, sorghum and millet farmers don’t cultivate at all… What they do is that they normally wait immediately after the flooding, sometimes around November they come to their farmlands and plant. Those things normally do well by taking advantage of the water lodged in the ground,” he said.
This is part of what Nigeria’s emergency management agency is telling community members it is engaging with, according to its spokesperson, Manzo Ezekiel.
The huge destructions usually witnessed during annual floods are exacerbated by poor infrastructure, disregard for building regulations and the impact of climate change as well as release of excess waters from dams.
Muhammad, the Kaduna resident, said he is happy to hear reports that the state government has awarded contracts for more drainages and road upgrades in his area hoping this will help in addressing the flood challenges.
It is hoped that these measures being taken by governments, communities and individuals will help people in the West African country to avoid huge loses to floods similar to those experienced last year.
