WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER
info@medaner.com, justme4justice@yahoo.com
It is yet another horrifying time for Nigeria as Borno state, largely the capital city, remains submerged underwater and struggles with the consequences of a broken dam and the ensuing flood that followed. The entire country mourns the dead, sympathises with the bereaved, the displaced and everyone directly and indirectly affected by the flood. In fact, we are all affected as a nation; an injury to one is an injury to all of us. And we must have to respond; responding like a community that is serious about setting things right by all means and at all costs. So many innocent citizens have been forced to their early graves, and far too many rendered helpless, homeless and without sustenance. Was that fate? No! It was the error of our systemic failure to be proactively responsive to the needs of its community; assuming all is well while we keep fire on top of the roof and go to sleep.
How did it happen? Did the dam get broken and the flood released upon us without any warning? Or do we pretend, and assume the worst might not happen, until eventually the calamity came upon us? Which of the calamities? When was the dam constructed? Haven’t we seen the signs of weakness in the infrastructure overtime? Had it been reported to the appropriate authorities, as the media news claim, and what were the responses, if any? If we are serious as a nation and we are seriously ready to rise above being vulnerable to circumstances like this, we must get answers to these questions and others yet unasked.
We cannot continue to be this vulnerable; vulnerable to all forms of insecurities and unprovoked attacks from all corners. Vulnerable, year on year to destructive flooding across the country, and seeing nothing corrective or preventive substantially done to prevent these disasters. Now, it is Borno state, but all the years past, it has always been the same story at different magnitudes across other states and locations nationwide. Yearly, Nigerians lose their lives, properties and livelihoods to flood disasters across many states. And all we see happening are media reporting and ‘audio’ programs that have never materialised to worthwhile solutions.
At this material time, while it is highly necessary to identify the obvious nonchalant behaviours in high places that make us so vulnerable, it is even more important that we find, foremost the best responses to the challenges of the victims in the ongoing record-breaking flood disaster in Borno state; getting succour and reliefs to all the affected as much as possible and as soon as possible. This is the time to organise support and substantial aids, to take off the effects of the frequent annual floods from all affected populations, communities, businesses and infrastructure. It is mandatory that we organise appropriate responses that would restore the affected areas to the prior status quo as soon as possible. And above all, this is the time that we organise our all systemic responses to prevent, as much as possible, all future occurrences of similar disasters by being proactive in our dealings with all related infrastructure.
At this point, putting aside all blame games, and asking about how to respond to return the affected areas in Borno state to its prior status quo: What have we done? Have we immediately carried out a rapid needs assessment of the flood situation as it becomes critical; determining what the immediate needs of the entire affected areas are, and setting mechanisms for updates as the situation unfolds in the course of the response and continuing flooding? And who are those officially mandated to handle such critical and vital national responsibility and what are their credentials and competence levels? Nevertheless, it is very important that the various mandate agencies, to achieve optimum results, cooperate with the organised communities, to assess the extent of damage, and create a platform of communication and interactions among the coordinating agencies, the local, state and federal authorities, as well as the various volunteer organisations.
The immediate need of the victims; the displaced population, would remain safe temporary shelters. As much as possible, this should be the first response of all the mandate agencies and volunteer groups on ground. The government must pull every weight to ensure all the victims are effectively settled down in decent temporary makeshift accommodations. Once that is done, we should look into the need for food, water, clothing and good sanitation to provide the victims with the minimum allowable living conditions by the WHO standard.
Special attention must be given to the health and emotional wellness of the children among the displaced in the entire affected capital city and its environs. This will easily be achieved by immediately improving the condition of the affected women as best as possible, because this directly determines the welfare of the children who are directly under the care of the women. It is the most sensible thing to do in the first place and ought to have been done; and if not, this should be carried out immediately collaboratively by the entire mandate agencies foremost. Also, special attention must be accorded to the specific needs of the young children, the elderly population, pregnant women and the disabled among the displaced. We must as well organise programs to deal with the psychosocial challenges that are bound to come with the displacement; helping them to cope with the attended traumas.
The need to ensure effective actions towards provision of food, clean water, clothing, good sanitation and hygienic conditions for all the affected population must be central to all interventions. It is obvious that access to the minimum requirement of clean water is off across the affected areas; and therefore, provision of good water, through direct water provision, must be paramount. This can be easily achieved through the deployment of emergency water trucking, borehole drilling and disinfection and chlorination at point and household level, water quality monitoring, minor repair and maintenance of existing and still accessible water facilities and systems. We must then gear up the interventions towards creation of hygienic systems via provisions of necessities and the carrying out of necessary awareness campaigns within the affected areas. Provision of personal hygiene kits to as many as possible would do a lot in preventing outbreak of diseases within the camps and other shelters being provided. These are very critical to stem the possibility of cholera outbreak among the displaced victims.
It is also important to consider the possible effect of cash based interventions. Direct provision of cash palliatives to the affected population will allow them to meet urgent needs that may not be attended to by any of the mandate relief-providing agencies. This will also enable a good number of the displaced people to restore their lives and livelihood as soon as possible, thereby reducing the displaced population. The federal government should look critically at this.
The government must also look into the need for the livelihood restoration of the affected victims, who have had their sources of livelihoods destroyed by the impact of the flood. If this is not addressed, we should be expecting a secondary challenge arising from the economic and emotional instability of these victims in the nearest future; hence, the need to, within a reasonable period of time, design programs within the intervention program, to assist the victims to rebuild their lives as much as possible. These will also include the rebuilding of all public assets and the infrastructure that are affected by the flood.
Then, we must address the issue of accountability. Aids and funds have been coming from across the globe, within and outside the country. This is not a time for middlemen; to allow entrepreneurial middlemen who specialise in benefiting from disasters. This is not a disaster to benefit from. The federal government must set up a high powered delegation to manage the accountability of all the interventions and responses towards resolving the disaster at hand and restoring all affected areas and people to the status quo.
While all these are done to address the problem at hand, what do we do to prevent future occurrences across the country? We have a good number of dams that were constructed in the 1970s; we have a number of flash points and states that are regularly prone to massive life and property-threatening floods as a result of rising sea levels during the annual raining season and even flooding from nearby countries. We cannot afford to continue to wait for the floods to come upon us, or praying and wishing we could escape them. Rather, we should proactively get ready to prevent them, as much as possible, from happening, and when they inevitably happen, have a responsive system and facilities in place to limit the damage to our settlements and community systems.
No matter how good the infrastructure may be, the possibility of a disaster is always there, and that is the reason why maintenance should always be done and by the right, competent and ethically-minded personnel. We must strengthen our maintenance culture as a people and a nation. Currently, we must be truthful to ourselves: it is poor. Currently, attention to town planning in Nigeria is below standards; despite recurring incidents of flooding, we still have buildings and infrastructure standing on or close to waterways, and flood paths and drainages clogged with refuse without due checks from the necessary quarters and agencies. We only respond to incidents and accidents after they have happened, demolishing and clearing water paths only to return back to similar disaster levels within a short time period.
If we must prevent the occurrence of this in the future, aside from ensuring effective management and maintenance of all the existing dams in the country, regardless of their ages, we must proactively prepare for flooding in all the flood prone sites of the country, which are all well known. We can, probably, do this by creating a path for water to move with minimum effect and havoc on the communities and population of the areas. Having standard drainages should be a norm for us; all the governments, from local to federal should make it a priority to construct standard drainages across the states, including unique standardised drainages at flood flashpoints across the country. The globe is adjusting its systems to the effects of climate change; we cannot afford to be left behind. We must make allowance for the changes that are irreversibly upon us.
We must reengineer our early warning program; not just for flood occurrence, but all related disasters that can negatively influence our systems. We must develop, beyond what we have presently, flood and general disaster early warning message systems; that inform authorities and communities of the impending danger of floods and other disasters in record time, enough for effective responses. These warnings should be provided and conveyed in an unambiguous, easily understandable manner and in common local language through a legally designated single authority and designated communities forums to ensure that the warning message reaches the intended audiences or vulnerable communities with little or no distortions. If we had done a bit of that in Borno state, we would not be dealing with this magnitude of deaths, displacement and destruction.
This is a critical time for all of us as Nigerians; and a time to rally round as a united people, to help those in dire needs; and definitely not the time to take advantage of the situation for personal gains. This is not a time to organise any protests disrupting the already weakened lives of Nigerians. Let us all please focus our energies on solving the current pressing challenges.
GOD BLESS THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA!
