This tweet by Eric coupled with a lot of frustration is what inspired me to write this article.
I’d start by commending NEMA so far: they are doing something – it isn’t enough – but then it’s something. I can recall that earlier this year they made calls for people to evacuate, that the floods were coming. I’m certain only a handful of people would have actually obliged to that request. But then, you don’t just tell people to leave their homes, where would they go?
Well, the floods came, and came again,
…and yet again, and again,
…AND AGAIN!
Same year and about 27 (most likely more) of the 36 states in Nigeria was affected by floods!
Several videos broke the internet. The most popular of videos was the one with the foreigner kayaking in Victoria Island. Another was the guy swimming on a spot somewhere in Lekki. The one that really hit me was of the men drinking in an outdoor bar with flood water reaching their knees!
I remember it started in Lagos, at Lekki. It made a lot of news on Social Media. The Mainland dwellers threw banters at the Island dwellers (the Island is generally where the upper middle class/Upper class reside) as images of flooded homes and streets filled the internet. Nigerians, as is our nature made light of a serious situation.
Then the mainland floods came, Surulere to be precise. No one laughed again. It was then that reality struck. With plastic bottles floating everywhere along with all other kinds of waste one could think of. The floods exposed just how terrible the waste disposal system in Lagos was. Apparently, it became obvious that mainland dwellers were even more unprepared for the floods.
It seems the floods travelled and went to visit other states in Nigeria to ‘greet’ them: Owerri, Portharcourt, Benue. Benue was the worst hit. Over a 100 homes were lost. We not only stopped laughing, we began to pray. Hashtag ‘Pray for Benue’ was all over the net. People began to donate, because of just how badly they were hit by the floods and how much they had lost. Sustyvibes wasn’t left out – many thanks to Ibiyinka for the initiative.
Mind you, elsewhere in the world at around the same period, hurricanes were moving towards Texas and Miami, just after wrecking deadly havoc on Puerto Rico. Monsoon Rains in Bangladesh also had a severe impact.
However, we can say the floods are over – I mean just the flood, not the impact because people are homeless. Some have lost everything and would have to begin life from ground zero.
But here comes the coup de grace, do you think we’ve learnt anything from this years’ floods? or Last years? Or the one from 2012? Knowing fully well, that around the same time every year, the floods would come to relatively the same places and wreck even more havoc. Do you think there have been solutions developed (maybe through urban design or policies) that may help to reduce the impact of the floods?
Or are we waiting for the floods to come next year again so we can react, upload photos for banter, do ‘pray for’ hashtags on Twitter, and send N500 donations?
I just hope we learn and not wait for Government to do everything. No, I am not saying they should not be accountable: they have a role to play. However, we should know better, that we would be the worst hit if these floods come again. We should also not be so oblivious to the fact that it’s not Government that litters, but we the citizens!
So it’s our responsibility to play our part, to #StareDownOnPollution; to ensure our drainages are always clean and free-flowing; to properly dispose of all our waste; to stop giving quack architects and contractors work to design and build homes and public spaces for us; without doing a proper feasibility studies to propose more resilient and adaptive infrastructures for flood-prone areas.
We also need to embrace nature, to plant more trees, to ‘soften up’ our landscape. This will make sure that there is soil absorbs rainwater quickly before it becomes a flood. The truth is, in the end, it’s only Nature that can calm her fury.
It’s important we learn this or else, someone would write an article like this around the same time next year venting frustrations on an issue we did nothing about. I hope I don’t stumble across such an article because if I do, (as much as I would blame myself for not doing enough), I’d blame you too.