Nasarawa flood victims helpless as rain intensifies

As the victims remain helpless about their situation following prediction of more rains by the Nigeria Meteorological Agency, the 15-man committee set up by the state government to make recommendations on how to execute the N400 million sent to the state are still meeting.A total of 95,538 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), about 8,000 from Guto […]

As the victims remain helpless about their situation following prediction of more rains by the Nigeria Meteorological Agency, the 15-man committee set up by the state government to make recommendations on how to execute the N400 million sent to the state are still meeting.
A total of 95,538 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), about 8,000 from Guto in Nasarawa local government area alone, were recorded to have been displaced in about 200 communities of nine local government areas across the state. Over 2,000 hectares of cultivated farmland were also washed in the floods which swamped thousands of houses.
Governor Umaru Tanko Al-Makura had said over N20 billion loss was recorded by the state during the disaster.
The state government camped the displaced persons in four camps of Guto in Nasarawa, Tunga in Awe, Umaisha in Toto, and Rukubi in Doma.
But the displaced persons left the camps and returned to the same flooded areas, just as the storm waters began to recede.
“We had to return to pick the pieces of our lives,” said an aged grandmother in Guto, who complained that nothing came the way of the family and thousands of other displaced persons inspite of the N400 million sent to the state by the federal government, last year.
But Dr. Mustapha Bello, head of the Task Force on the Mitigation of the Impact of Flood Disasters, told Daily trust yesterday that “we are also worried over what has happened,” adding that “we are still working on that particular project.” He refused to make explanations.
The government, on December 4, 2012, after receiving the grant, inaugurated a 15-man body, to make recommendations on how to execute the funds. But the taskforce long exhausted the six-week period given them, without achieving anything other than to make disbursement of between N2,000 and N3,000 as well as one bag of grains to each households in only four of the nine local government areas displaced by the floods.
The taskforce’s first interim report was withdrawn because it did not have the assent of 13 members, as it was done secretly by two members, with a recommendation for the governor to sack one of the members because he granted a press interview on their activities.