Nigeria may experience more flood disaster if…

As Nigerians continue to agonise over the deadly flood incident in Mokwa, Niger state which claimed lives of over 100 persons, a non-governmental organisation, Environment Watch, has attributed it to non-implementation of ministry of works’ 2025 budget. The NGO decried the delay in implementing the 2025 budget five months into the fiscal year insisting that […]

As Nigerians continue to agonise over the deadly flood incident in Mokwa, Niger state which claimed lives of over 100 persons, a non-governmental organisation, Environment Watch, has attributed it to non-implementation of ministry of works’ 2025 budget.

The NGO decried the delay in implementing the 2025 budget five months into the fiscal year insisting that the delay stalled works on drainages and other erosion issues in different parts of the country noting “this would have greatly mitigated the Mokwa flood disaster”.

Speaking during a visit to the IDPs camp, Programme Manager of the NGO, Haruna Ndazogi, specifically chided the Minister of Works, David Umahi, for failing to commence the procurement process for critical federal projects captured in the 2025 budget.

He warned that unless concrete measures are taken, there would be more flood disaster in different parts of the country with the rains just beginning “since most of these projects have not been accorded priority by the works ministry”.

“While information available to us suggest that other MDAs have started issuing contracts for 2025, Minister Umahi, for reasons best known to him, has refused to kick start the process in the works ministry.

“We are worried that if care is not taken, we may be experiencing more and more flood disaster since roads, culverts and bridges that would have been fixed had the ministry approve contracts from the 2025 fiscal year, are left in a state of disrepair,” he added.

Ndazogi said the NGO interfaced with some members of the national assembly who confirmed that they had captured some of the roads, bridges, culverts and drainages in the 2025 budget as their constituency projects but the non-implementation is dragging things back.