Speaking at his ministry’s budget defence conference on Wednesday, Minister of Water Resources, Suleiman Adamu has disclaimed the conclusion drawn by the public that the flood that has been ravaging the country was caused by the release of the Lagdo dam in Cameroon.
He said“All these stories I’ve been seeing on social media, I just laugh because they are misleading. The contribution of the Lagdo dam to flooding in this country is only one per cent. Sometimes they release the water without notice and when they do that, it has an impact on communities downstream.
“But it is not the main reason we have floods in this country — 80 per cent of the floods in this country is water that we are blessed with from God from the sky,” he said.
“This year’s flood, I can assure you, we cannot blame it on Cameroon, to be sincere. We’ll continue to have floods on the river Niger and Benue basins. We signed the MOU with the Cameroonian authorities, but since then, every year, it is the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency (NIHSA) that calls them to find out if they released the dam or not.
According to figures released by the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), more than two million people have been affected by the flood, with over 500 deaths. Several communities have also been cut off from trade and food supply due to a lack of access to their communities.
Credit: People Gazzette
