The Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency (NIHSA) has warned that there is a high probability that 74 Local Government Areas (LGAs) across the country will witness high flood risk when the rainy season begins in full this year,
Nigeria’s Minister of Water Resources, Mr. Suleiman Adamu, who unveiled the 2019 Annual Flood Outlook of the agency on Tuesday in Abuja, said that the agency classified the country’s flood scenarios for this year into three categories of vulnerability.
“The three categories of vulnerability include the highly probable flood risk areas – to be experienced in 74 LGAs; probable flood risk areas – to be experienced in 279 LGAs, and low flood risk areas – to be experienced in 421 LGAs.
“All the 36 states of the federation including the Federal Capital Territory are expected to experience different levels of flooding,” he said.
Explaining the predictions, the Director-General of NIHSA, Mr. Clement Nze, stated that the predicted probable flood area coverage in 2019 was expected to be lower than that of 2018, and that river flooding was expected in the Niger, Benue, Sokoto-Rima, Anambra, Imo, Cross River, Niger Delta, Komadougu-Yobe and Ogun-Osun River Basins.
Nze said that coastal flooding was likely in Bayelsa, Rivers, Delta, Ondo and Lagos states due to the rise in sea level and tidal surge.
“Flash and urban flooding are forecasted to occur in Ibadan, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Sokoto, Kaduna, Yola, Maiduguri, Makurdi, Hadejia and other major cities due to poor drainage systems,” he said.
The report by Nigeria’s Punch newspaper on Wednesday said that the agency recommended that to mitigate the impact of flooding, the country should build flood-resilient communities, and stressed that there was a need to close the knowledge gap around the issue of floods among the decision and policymakers and planners at the national and local levels.
The agency called for improved synergy among all the government agencies whose activities are related to prevention and/or mitigation flooding, as well as the prompt sensitisation of the public on the information contained in the Annual Flood Outlook as a measure for flood early warning and flood disaster prevention.
GIK/APA