Mokwa flood disaster and related matters

On Wednesday 28 May 2025, residents of Mokwa town in Niger State and its environs were confronted by massive flood water, which rapidly swept through the community leaving in its track collapsed houses, public infrastructure notably the main bridge linking the town with other parts of the country. Several lives were lost. A major feature […]

On Wednesday 28 May 2025, residents of Mokwa town in Niger State and its environs were confronted by massive flood water, which rapidly swept through the community leaving in its track collapsed houses, public infrastructure notably the main bridge linking the town with other parts of the country. Several lives were lost.

A major feature of the Mokwa flood was the surprised, rapid nature of its occurrence and scale of deaths and the destruction caused.

As a flood planner, one easily suspects three likely causes for the flood scenario; one there was hardly an early warning and evacuation system in place, secondly, there seems to be so many structures many of them made of vulnerable building materials such as mud, zinc and wood sited within flood prone zone; the third was that the river, which could have contained most of the excess flood water, may have silted over the years.

This means that the Niger State government and its town planners and other environmental engineers must return to the drawing board and get their acts together. Our emergency responders and relief providers, such as the NSEMA, NEMA, and NSCDC, were also caught off guard, which leaves our disaster warning and response system with much to be desired.

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The people of such affected communities often exhibit exemplary communal spirit in dealing with flood disasters to fight the advancing flood waters. But their capacities are limited by resource availability and equipment.

Since flood disasters are a recurring decimal in several communities, why has a sustainable response become elusive? My research experience shows several factors are contributing to flood disasters in our urban settlements. They include the very closeness of some of the them to the river course, the flat nature of topography, the massive silting of the river beds over the years, the false sense of security created from flooding as a result of the construction of dams, which either release excess water downstream at peak periods or when such dams suffer accidental collapse as did the Allau Dam, which flooded two third of Maiduguri during the last rainy season.  Lack of proper land use zoning arrangement and inadequate flood control engineering measures are also pervasive in most states.

Federal and state governments are yet to institutionalise sustainable flood control measures.  The body language of most governments seems to be that of treading the familiar course of the fire brigade approach of providing ‘relief’ whenever a flood disaster occurs, while resuming business as usual thereafter. The usual recourse is to use the state emergency management agencies to address disasters, both natural and man-made.

Worst still, many of these agencies do not seem to be adequately capable of handling mitigation, rescue, evacuation, and other disaster response measures. They mainly distribute relief materials, even though in a very limited manner.

Since we are under a democratic dispensation, state and federal legislators, particularly from the flood-prone areas, have the important role of bringing up the issue of flood disaster under matters of urgent attention, constituency projects, or special intervention from the appropriate government agencies.

Thus, for flood prone settlements to be relieved from the recurring flood government must abandon its piecemeal approach and invest adequately in sustainable land use, emergency response, flood warning, and engineering measures, among others. We must evolve radical attitudinal change, establish an appropriate institutional framework, embark on robust capacity building, and imbibe innovative ideas and sustainable governance and financing mechanisms to address the situation.

 

TPL Garba Isa is a former Executive Secretary, Jigawa State Urban Development, [email protected]