Flood: Benue victims cry out…as Suswam insists on using N500m for projects

Some of the victims who spoke to Daily Trust said the appeal became necessary because the government was yet to fulfil the promises made to them during last year’s flood which drove them out from their homes for a period of over three months.Evelyn Apaa, a 300-level student of the Benue State University who lives […]

Some of the victims who spoke to Daily Trust said the appeal became necessary because the government was yet to fulfil the promises made to them during last year’s flood which drove them out from their homes for a period of over three months.
Evelyn Apaa, a 300-level student of the Benue State University who lives at Kutcha Utebe along Gboko road suffered great losses from the flood last year said if government failed to address the situation early enough so many people would be displaced this year.
 “I’m still here because it is my father’s house. I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what to do. Government seems to be completely detached from us. I lost everything when I returned home after last year flood. The government did not give me a dime. I had to source for money to replace my lost items. I’m afraid of the expected flood this year”.
Apaa therefore appealed to government to begin to prepare accommodation early for those that  would likely be affected by the impending danger otherwise the situation would be intolerable as people would have no one to turn to as they did not get any compensation from government over last year’s disaster despite various promises to rehabilitate the flood victims.
“Last year, there was no room for us (students) in the camp and the school could not accommodate us either because everywhere was filled up. I fear that if it happens this time, some of us will sleep in the street”, she added.
Similarly, Paul Oche, a resident of Idye village who lost some valuables following last week’s rainfall which blew off his roof urged government to put up structures that would accommodate the displaced or relocate residents in flood prone vicinity.
“My family and I had to pack our mattresses and other valuable items after the midnight rain blew off the roof inorder to at least save some of our property while some were lost to the flood that took over the area just in a few hours.”
The story of Dennis Agbo, a resident of Wadata-an area that was adversely affected by the last year’s flooding was not different either as he seems helpless over the Nigerian Metrological Agency (NIMET) prediction about his home likely to go down again.
He said, “It doesn’t seem government is doing anything about our cries. They promised us heaven and earth during the flood last year but up till this moment we speak there is absolutely nothing on ground to show their seriousness”.
Despite the hues and cries, the state government has said it would not disburse a dime from the N500 million flood relief money given to the state by the federal government for the victims of last year’s disaster in the state. Governor Gabriel Suswam in a recent chat with journalists in Makurdi admitted that there has been so much speculation as to the flood money but that the money was intact for capital project purposes.
Suswam noted that, “The money that we expended as a state was even more than N500 million. When the federal government gave N500 million, it was meant for us to package relief materials and give out to people who were affected.
“But fortunately for us, a lot of Benue sons and daughters and other Nigerians gave us a lot of relief materials including NEMA. So we decided that this N500 million should be deployed to other uses. As I talk to you, the money is in the account of the Ministry of  Finance”.
The governor stated that the state took statistics of those affected and found that if they disbursed the money, each family would get between N700 and N3000 out of the N500 million.
“To this end, the state government decided that it would be more profitable to execute capital projects with the money rather than to disburse very meagre sum to the victims.
“We decided after we took the statistics of what has happened in other states. In Kogi when they distributed the money, people got N3000, N5000; in another local government some people got N700, some got N2000. And so we felt that it was better to do something meaningful.
“So I called the chairmen of the local governments affected, and I told them, go back and talk to the people in the areas that were affected so that we can sit down and distribute the money and then you will go and do projects in these places. So the chairmen came, we held the meeting, they went back, met the people; and some of them said they want the money distributed, some said well, if there is anything reasonable that can be done, let it be done,” he explained.
According to him, they then decided that as a government, they owed it as a duty to the people to do what would be of utmost benefit to them. So they sat down and shared the money on a ratio proportionate to the magnitude of the damage that was done and Logo, the least of the local governments, got N11.6 million.
“In Makurdi, we have just awarded a drainage contract from Kyabiz Hotel right down to the Benue State University Teaching Hospital and then to the river; we are taking N200 million of that money and the state government will add a counterpart fund of about N100 million to build the project.
“The contractors gave us this project cost at over a billion naira but the Ministry of Environment said that they can do it as direct labour at the cost of N300 million. The contract was approved by the Executive Council. Two hundred million of the relief money is to be put in so that we can construct that drainage because that is where people were most affected,” Suswam stressed.