Wading through Lafia’s annual flood headache

While the rains come as blessing to many, with the accompanying cooling effect and the positive effect for farming in Lafia, residents dread the season and wish it never comes. This is so because like the big party men whose experience has remained a referral point around the state capital, residents of Lafia have a […]

While the rains come as blessing to many, with the accompanying cooling effect and the positive effect for farming in Lafia, residents dread the season and wish it never comes. This is so because like the big party men whose experience has remained a referral point around the state capital, residents of Lafia have a date with flood anytime it rains. But worst hit are slums around Lafia – east, Doma Road, UAC Road, Emir’s Palace and Tundun Amba. The latest victims of the persistent floods told Weekly Trust that they faced an experience as that of the big men of the PDP underbelly.

Ahmadu Jibrin, a widower living on the same street where the PDP vehicle disappeared with the storm waters, is now homeless – living in an uncompleted building with his eight children and two aged parents. His home – a block of three bedroom flat and another of two separate rooms collapsed last week with the two-day flood that lasted with the heavy downpour of two different nights.

Like many other victims, Jibrin’s house was reduced to rubbles with his property washed away. What used to be shelter to a large family, only a part of the iron-sheet roof which is still lying flat on the rubbles, was available. Apart from the roof, the only available feature around the collapsed house is ridges of sharp sand which the flood washed into the compound. The sand creates a sand dune in the middle of a drying river.

“It is the third time I am suffering flood this year alone”, the widower who buried his wife not long before the disaster struck, told Weekly Trust in Hausa.

He said this last one did not come as a surprise though, since the entire Lafia is susceptible to flooding anytime it rains, but he never thought he was going to be completely rendered homeless.

Standing on what used to be his only shelter in the world, this victim remembered he thought of selling the plot after the strike of the disaster, but said again that he gave up the idea after considering that so long as he will build and reside still in Lafia, there is no escaping flood. He suggested that government must be proactive in tackling the ecological problem by constructing drainages, which absence in the state capital has made the metropolis prone to persistent flooding. Meanwhile, he has appealed for relief from authorities and good spirited individuals.

Another resident, Suleiman Nagarta , a journalist who has severally suffered flooding on the same street, said “in this area, we are condemned to live with flooding”, explaining that any drop of rain collects storm waters from around and floods the area.

Nagarta said the condition of the hundreds of residents living in Angwan Yazawa is so bad that at every rain, they are cut off completely from other parts of the town. “If you are outside of your home when it is raining, it means you cannot return home. And if you are already home, it means you can not go out until the area dries off”, he said, explaining that rains flood the area to heights which bury the streets, cutting off access.

The development bites harder when pupils and students of schools around the area, are kept arms’ length from classes. Some of these schools are Immaculate Nursery and Primary School, Winners Team Nursery and Primary School as well as Lafia-East Secondary School.

Not far from Angwan Yawaza is a densely populated Sabon Pegi, another part of Lafia east slums which also suffered bouts of flooding in last weeks couple of rains. Here, gully erosion is the first feature a first time visitor comes face to face with. This is caused by surging floods, residents say.

Along what has come to be known as Former Standard Hotel Street since Lafia lacks coordinated development which entails a perfect network of roads with names, not less than a dozen residents lost property to flooded water which rose to lintel level. The flood which increased with another night of heavy rain which poured in between 12pm and dawn of Tuesday, October 27, washed off not less than eight houses, but victims said no lives were lost.

A journalist who is a victim of the raging flood, Mr. Hudu A. Hudu had told Weekly Trust on phone that within his area alone, two houses collapsed.

One of his neighbours, Hassan Abu, however recounted the ordeal of residents of the area. “So much water entered my house, rendering me homeless for the period it took for the water to dry off”, he said.

The father of eight from two wives – all residing in a three room apartment, Abu said he has not had a break from this experience the whole length of the rainy reason. He said the only relief is the approaching dry season since there is no effort to drain to area, and by extension, control storm waters out of the metropolis.

Opposite Abu’s resident stands a big compound which has been deserted by its occupants who were rendered homeless by the floods of last week and early this week. “All occupants left. None has come back yet. I don’t know whether they have plans of returning to the house,” a neighbour who refused to state her identity told Weekly Trust.

Like the areas of Sabon Pegi and Angwan Yawaza, Doma Road, UAC Road and Emir’s Palace suffered waves of flooding between last week and early this week when rains intensified. It was observed that many housing structures were soaked to window level while residents collected water with the use of cans. Shops aon Doma Road and the adjoining Railway Crossing collected the storm waters, forcing the owners to evacuate their wares to safe places.

Victims said they lost millions to the disaster which they blamed on lack of drainages to channel storm waters out of the town.

The floods which devastated this area were coming barely three weeks after the many slum settlement of Tudun Amba suffered a serious bout of the disaster.

The slum which rises from both banks of Amba Stream has been repeatedly cut off from the rest of the town. Rains during the period have wrecked havoc, bringing untold hardship to this slum as storm waters collected from other parts of the town swelled and overflowed the banks, thereby pouring into homes.

The persistent flooding destroyed crops along the stream, just as it ran over the bridge linking the slum with other parts of the town thereby cutting off access. Residents said they have lived with this disaster for years in Tudn Amba.

“What can we do?” asked a resident who added that “it’s a yearly disaster and we have lived with this for years,” Egye Danjuma as he gave his name, said.

Although a contract was awarded by the state government in 2007 to give the state capital good roads and a perfect drainage system, the contractors – CCECC has continued to sleep over the project, two years later. State commissioner for Works and Transport, Sahihu Ofoku Giza had said work on the project will pick up by the end of last month. He had blamed the lack of progress on the provision the drainages – an aspect of the project, to sub-contractors