Nigeria’s politics of flood and UK’s flood of colour

Congratulations, if you are reading this, you have survived the floods that have drowned a significant chunk of Nigerian hamlets, villages, towns and cities. We should be grateful for the luxury to sit, perhaps in the comfort of our homes or workplace, to read this, either in the paper or on our mobile devices.  It […]

Congratulations, if you are reading this, you have survived the floods that have drowned a significant chunk of Nigerian hamlets, villages, towns and cities. We should be grateful for the luxury to sit, perhaps in the comfort of our homes or workplace, to read this, either in the paper or on our mobile devices. 

It has often been said, almost to the point of cliché, that surviving Nigeria—because Nigeria is infinitely perilous—is an extreme sport. Such expressions are common and have morphed into book titles like “Everything in Nigeria is Going to Kill You” by Ayo Sogunro. As it turns out, even the water is not left out.

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Every year, recurrent floods wash away the homes of hundreds and sometimes thousands of families and send hundreds of persons to a watery death, often displacing hundreds of thousands. This year, over 600 persons have lost their lives in floods that have swept across some 33 out of 36 states in the country and displaced 1.3 million people. It is the worst since 2012.

To move around, Keke NAPEP, those annoying but essential means of transport in many towns and villages, have been buried underwater, their places have been taken by canoes that glide across streets with their keels often brushing rooftops.

It is 2022 and Nigeria is still suffering such avoidable disasters. The irony, however, is that every year, these floods, like clockwork, happen. The waters rise, dams are unleashed or unleashed themselves, and whole towns and villages are submerged, and cut off for months.

Every year, newspapers and TV stations publish reports about the suffering of survivors and the lack of support for them. Yet the responsible parties never took serious actions to forestall these. Drainage channels are clogged, sometimes with heaps of garbage, rivers and waterways are not dredged and houses continue to be built in flood plains.

The National Emergency Management Agency through its spokesman, Manzo Ezekiel, said in published reports that some flood victims are simply inaccessible and cannot be reached with aid. 

It is a dire situation, true, but when considered critically, it is an even more annoying claim to make. The NEMA was established for the sole purpose of accessing people in dire situations to provide them with relief. Since it is a well-known fact that these floods are recurrent, and are predicted well in advance every year, does the NEMA have any legitimate excuse not to consider all possibilities and avenues of providing relief for the potential victims?

That is even coming from the perspective that in our habitual nonchalance, Nigeria folds its arms and watches the flood happen. Finally, as Presidential Spokesman Garba Shehu would have us believe, the President has ordered his ministers to present to him a lasting plan to prevent floods in the next 90 days. This deadline will expire a month before the general elections and a few short months before the president leaves office for good. Where did the last seven years go? 

I don’t think anyone expected the president to offer some platitude to the flood victims not to talk of showing up on the bridge in Benue or at their various camps where some of them are taking refuge. In essence, they have been left to swim or sink without a lifeline.

One presidential aspirant though visited. Another asked that one not to play politics with the floods. It is all bizarre, to be honest. We have the tendencies of performative politics in this country and often capitalise on issues affecting the poor and neglected to score cheap political points.

I suppose readers remember that year the APC, still in opposition then, decided to protest the bad government of the PDP in 2014 with complaints from insecurity to mismanagement and a disconnect with both reality and the people they are supposed to govern being the motivator. In retrospect, we see that protest as performative, a theatre of the absurd designed to fool gullible Nigerians that they care.

The floods have devastated the country, a monumental national disaster which is not being talked about enough because Lagos and Abuja have been spared. But the worse thing is that neither the president nor his vice for that matter, has shown presence, or directly engaged with the issue. All we have now is another terse statement from the presidency, asking a committee to submit a report in 90 days.

This flood is a metaphor. It represents the way Nigeria has been let go, without restraint. The dams are let loose, and the country is flooded, just as the naira is let loose, free-falling and flooding the economy with inflation and market chaos.

Nigerians are drowning, in flood waters and inflations, and there is neither straw nor sword for us to grasp.

The Great Britain of chaos

Speaking about floods in their various iterations, the United Kingdom has, of recent, been flooded with chaos that even Nigeria has enjoyed more stability in its governance than the UK. The irony.

Unless you are living under a rock, I suppose you will know that the last two months have been quite exciting in the UK, mostly not the good kind.  

First, Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister at the time, defied a lockdown curfew his government had imposed on the people and organised a mini Bunga Bunga party that got leaked and caused quite a scandal. Apparently, his hair wasn’t the only thing he couldn’t keep under control and he was forced to resign.

And then came the unfortunate Liz Truss to replace him. A more unfortunate British PM the world has never seen. She came, shook the Queen’s hand and the next day, the poor Queen was dead (not that Elizabeth II was poor or anything, but you get the point). Truss’ greatest achievement in office was burying a Queen that seemed to have locked death in her pocket, or handbag, and then after that, a series of disastrous policies that badly affected the economy saw her standing outside 10 Downing Street to announce her resignation, 44 days after assuming office. Her most shameful failure is losing a longevity contest to a 60-pence lettuce. 

Now, for the first time in history, there is a British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, who is not white and not Christian. Videos of him performing a Hindu ritual before entering his office for the first time trended on Twitter.

Coming a few years after Brexit, whose principal aim was to keep Britain for a particular kind of Brits, is ironic and the ultimate middle finger to that unfortunate Brexit Vote.

Sunak’s candidacy was interesting on several fronts. He is the youngest PM in history at 42 and the richest. He is as rich as the King himself. His candidacy saw some racist Brits coming out of the woodworks to express their umbrage about the government being headed by a man born to Indian immigrants.

I listened to one of them on a radio programme whose core argument was that he, as a white British man, could not possibly go to India or Saudi Arabia and become the Prime Minister there.

Obviously, this man has forgot that up to 1960, the governor generals of Nigeria were all white British men, that are not Nigerians and never secured the votes of Nigerians or their elected representatives to govern them.

When Boris first messed up his hair beyond redemption and was on his way to being booted out of office, the name of a woman of Nigerian descent, Kemi Badenoch, was mentioned as a possible replacement. Nigerians rallied and some supported her claim, not realising that Badenoch in trying so hard to be British, out-Britished the Brits with her anti-immigration policies. But Nigerians didn’t care. She was of Nigerian descent, some said. As if she ran for council election in Nigeria they would vote for her without questioning her religion, ethnicity or gender. Joke.

What is happening to Britain is effectively the democratic colonisation of the colonial masters. The Mayor of London is of Pakistani descent, and the Prime Minister is of Indian descent. And they even have a prince that is black, going by the one-drop rule. There is some colour in the palace and at 10 Downing Street. The wonder.

There is so much going on in the world, only if one can keep his head above the waters to see.