Water coming!

I travelled this weekend to Bare a Numan suburb on the banks of both Rivers Gongola and the Benue. It was to bury the iconic broadcaster of Radio Television Kaduna’s Democracy in Action fame, the programme’s producer Nyaka Mindapa, who had recently passed on. A tribute to him in the future will be in place. […]

I travelled this weekend to Bare a Numan suburb on the banks of both Rivers Gongola and the Benue. It was to bury the iconic broadcaster of Radio Television Kaduna’s Democracy in Action fame, the programme’s producer Nyaka Mindapa, who had recently passed on. A tribute to him in the future will be in place. Our way to Bare was a challenge in peril. We’re we not led by the indigenes to whom the overflowing gorges meant no scare, we may not have ventured to go. I was engrossed in the eulogies, tears welling in my eyes, when a staff that accompanied me brought my phone with a message he was told to bring to my immediate attention. The message was from a cameraman filming a project in Numan. It was short and simple but confusing – ‘Water Coming!’ I put a call though and was told in detail that the Lagdo Dam has released its waters into the Benue and if we did not get out of Bare in time, we would be stuck there for the season. In our tradition, you do not leave a funeral until the vote of thanks and I felt that getting stuck in Bare even for a season was a deserved accolade to Nyaka Mindapa.
While in Bare, I was struck by the simplicity and hospitality of the people. They expressed their sorrow in dance and it was clear they knew the flood was coming, yet they were unperturbed. They were at one with their land. I felt pity and anger. Pity because 100 years of Nigeria’s existence has registered little visible impact on the lives of these people. Yet it is one community that the Catholic Church impacted upon with education early, enabling many of their citizens to go to Teachers College Bazza, Women Teachers College Sugu, and Villanova Secondary which Nyaka Mindapa attended. Bare told the story of scores of settlements on the banks of the Benue in Nigeria imperilled by the Cameroonian Lagdo Dam, communities that gave to their nation, and got almost nothing in return. I felt anger because matters needed not be so, seeing as we made to leave, the Bare waterfront had taken up many homes, a canoe was rowing past the Church we would have held the funeral service at. Today, homes and property have been lost, the people, resigned seemingly into their helplessness. Nigeria has indeed diminished to the extent that we are in doldrums now. Strategically, Cameroon has Nigeria over a barrel of a gun, holding a strange weapon of the Benue Waters from Lagdo.
The same year that Nigeria declared and indulged in the FESTAC (African Festival of Arts and Culture) spending then millions that convert to trillions now, Cameroon had better use for its taxpayers money. The country built the Lagdo dam beginning in 1977 and completing it in 1982. During that period Nigeria flirted with River Basin Development Authorities and ignored Cameroonian warnings of impending disaster in the event Lagdo came to fruition, and Nigeria was not ready with a control Dam in Dasin, a natural offering. While the river basins perished in corruption and waste, Lagdo flourished and the international power company AES SONEL runs the hydroelectric dam, satisfying Cameroon’s electricity needs and serving all season farming. Lagdo supplies Northern Cameroon with its electricity needs and steadily as well, regardless of how small a settlement is as long as it is connected. The dam inundates and makes available 15,000 hectares of irrigable land downstream for food and cash crops.
It is pitiable that the Nigerian narrative is different. We are doomed to be annually warned of an impeding opening of the Lagdo dam floodgates; and our poor helpless village folk along the entire length and breadth of the Benue River only look on as bare belongings in housing, food, clothing and indeed lives are lost lost to floods.
On August 5th Cameroonian Authorities issued a global notice to the effect that it had to open the dam’s floodgates. Nigeria reechoed the notice through the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) which alerted state governments and communities along River Benue of possible flood following information from Cameroonian authorities on plans to release excess water from Lagdo Dam. In 2012 the release of excess water from the dam resulted to massive flooding of communities along the river. Lives and property were lost. Nigeria was weak-kneyed, unable to face of the the leadership deficit for which its people were perishing. In 2013, the two countries mutually agreed that Cameroon was to give early enough warning to enable Nigeria put in place proactive measure to prevent destruction of lives and properties. Since then, Nigeria has been poor in advocacy and very inadequate in even perceiving the magnitude of the problem from several levels.
The international dimension of the challenge of Lagdo means that it is a Federal Government responsibility. Lagdo Dam with old technology took 5 years to build. A dam of lesser span in Dasin in Adamawa State is a Federal solution that can adequately address the problem to the goodness of all down the entire Benue River’s length. It may not be out of place to seek that funds meant for the rehabilitation of North East owing to the damage of the Boko Haram part supports the construction of the dam down stream from Lagdo in Nigeria.
At the State level all Northern States on the Benue River, namely Adamawa, Taraba, Benue, and Nasarawa States aught to team up in contributing quotas towards this permanent solution to a perennial problem.
Let the warning be reechoed. “Water Coming”. The devastation has began. Another human tragedy is in the offing. God forbid.
Timawus Mathias [email protected]