The Minister of Water resources, Sarah Reng Ochekpe, has urged people living in the flood plains, especially Jebba and Kanji in Niger State, to move away to avoid a repeat of the 2012 flooding.
Ochekpe made this known during a stakeholders’ meeting on flood warning in Abuja.
She said the essence of the meeting was to sensitize the general public, with particular reference to people living around Kainji and Jebba dams.
The Minister said following the alert received from the Transmission Company of Nigeria on the potential threat of flooding of the Kainji and Jebba Dams, the ministry took measures to bring all the stakeholders together.
She said: “The meeting would therefore be able to address the issue from our different perspectives and come up with an implementable strategy for plan of action to sensitize the communities in the flood plains of the reservoirs of the Kainji and Jebba Dams, within the cooperative framework of management of floods as part of our Inter-ministerial Emergency Preparedness for 2013 flood and Rainfall Prediction.”
Ochekpe further said that the stakeholders would put in place advocacy and sensitization programmes on flood, using communication experts to visit the area and educate them on the need to move away from the flood prone areas.
It should be recalled that during the construction of Jebba and Kainji Dams, communities living there were relocated far away from the Dams’ site but gradually the communities moved closer to the dams’ site and face threat of flooding if the dams overflow.
In his remarks, the General Manager, Transmission Company of Nigeria, Engineer Ciroma Joseph, said that the ongoing rehabilitation of Jebba Spillway channel, funded by the World Bank under the Niger Basin Water Resources Development and Sustainable Eco System Programme, requires that the spillway gates will not be operated until full execution of the rehabilitation works.
Joseph added that considering the current advanced stage of the work, spillway operation for flood management at this stage would damage and wash away all the works so far accomplished.
However, he said the use of spillway gates may become unavoidable under emergencies where there is a higher magnitude of inflow beyond the capacities of alternative discharge facilities.
The Minister while commending the stakeholders for their timely response to the invitation, called on the media to ensure objective reporting and help in conveying the awareness of the flood challenges to Nigerians.
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