Ahead of the rainy season, the Nasarawa State Emergency Management Agency (NASEMA) has called on the communities living in coastal areas to take precautions against floods and adhere strictly to 2023 predictions.
The Director-General of the agency, Mr Zachary Allumaga, made the call on Monday while speaking with journalists in Lafia, the state capital.
Allumaga emphasized on the 2023 flood Prediction by Nigerian Meteorological Agency and other actors within the sphere of climate change, particularly flood, showing that there might be flood from March to April 2023.
He reiterated that the prediction included months of August, September and October to experience yet another flood.
He explained that Nasarawa State, unfortunately like a few others, was prone to flood because of its boundary with River Benue in the southern part of the state, hence whenever the river rose, it affected the state.
He said, in the light of the prediction, the Agency had started sensitizing and communicating to flood prone local government areas and riverine communities, on the need to take precautions and be on alert.
The director-general particularly warned those who built structures on waterways to dismantle them to give way for easy and free flow of water.
“The agency’s duty is both preventive and curative, having been warned that is real and is going to happen, we sensitize them; this is likely to happen to get ready, when it happens we can evacuate them to the high grounds we have identified.
“Our messages are particularly directed at people who had experienced flood, rain and wind storms in their communities, and those areas we know that are likely to happen as a result of environmental degradation.Those who like farming by the river should stop it now and look for somewhere else to farm because flood is likely to wash them off, it happened last year where yam and rice farms were washed away,” he said.
On the recent wind and rain storm destruction in Nassarawa local government, he said Governor Abdullahi Sule had visited the two communities of Nguchu and Ara where more than 100 houses were affected and donated N10 million to each of the communities.
Allumaga further revealed that the agency had already gone there to assess the level of destruction with a view to assisting affected households with building materials to rebuild their houses.
The DG said arrangements had been concluded to return the victims of Doka bombing who were currently taking temporary shelter in some communities in the three LGAs of Keana, Obi and Doma.
“We have identified where they came from and wrote that they should be relocated; we are waiting for the money to be released from the office of the Accountant General of the state, then we can take them back home,” he added.