Following the flooding disaster ravaging various parts of the Nigeria, the Anambra State Governor, Professor Charles Soludo has said that the country needs to have a national emergency conversation on flooding to avert recurrence.
Soludo who was speaking on a Channel TV programme noted that the issue of flooding is a recurring one especially when neighbouring country Cameroun opens its dam questions the preparedness of the country for the next time it happens.
He said, “What is the nation doing to prepare for the next one because we know that it will happen again and again? It has been happening, and Cameroon will soon open the dam in the next one or two years.
“What is the national plan to deal with the next one? Whether we are going to build dams or embankments along the banks of the rivers. I think as a nation, we need a national emergency conversation.”
Governor Soludo also stated that one-third of Anambra has been submerged in floods and this has caused the already bad situation of the state being the “erosion capital of Nigeria” to worsen.
“The fundamental thing for us is not so much the ravage of this flood, it has made a bad situation worse for us in Anambra.
The environment is Anambra’s number one existing threat. Anambra is the gully erosion capital of Nigeria with about 30% of our lands under threat by gully erosion,” he stated.
Speaking on his administration’s response to the flood, he said his government has been “cleaning up drainages just to let water get to the river but now water from the rivers now overwhelm one-third of the state, even a little more than one-third of the state”.
He also described the Ecological Fund paid to Anambra by the Federal Government as a “peanut” that can’t even cover a single bridge swept away by floods.
“I would bet that if you spend 50% of the entire Ecological Fund in Anambra State in one year, it will be significant but touch 20% of the problem. Anambra is a national emergency by itself, by the nature of the ecological challenge that requires special funding and attention because one-third of the land of Anambra is under threat,” the governor stated.
