A report by the National Agricultural Extension and Research Liaison Services (NAERLS), Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria has revealed that Nigerian farmers recorded N700 billion losses to 2022 floods.
This include the loss of 8.4 million tonnes of 14 crop varieties output, valued at N384.4 billion with the fish sector accounted for the loss of N100.2 billion, while over N93.04 billion was also lost in the livestock sector.
Also, the overall lost to the impact of the floods on agricultural structures and farmlands amounted to over 120 billion naira with 863,648 hectares of farmlands affected.
The survey showed that Kebbi, Delta, and Cross River states were the most severely affected by the flood while Nasarawa, FCT and Oyo were the least affected among the 30 states selected for the study.
In their assessment, a team of three multi-disciplinary scientists, including one experienced staff from each of the respective states’ Agricultural Development Programme (ADP) and State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) were deployed using field visits, focus group discussions, key informant interviews, and individual farmer interviews involving 1,180 respondents nationwide.
According to their findings, 1,798 communities were affected by the floods in 263 local government areas and the major causes in South-East and North-Central were releases of excess water from Lagdo Dam, Cameroon, and excessive rainfall in South-west, while the occurrence of flood in North-West and North-East was due to heavy rainfall and blockage of existing drainages.
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Presenting the assessment report to the minister of agriculture and rural development, Dr Mohammad Mahmood Abubakar in Abuja, NAERLS executive director, Prof Emmanuel Ikani said their findings showed that Akwa Ibom, Cross River, and Taraba reported that early warning information about the flood was not shared among farmers in their states.
While recommending solutions, he said, “The Federal Ministry of Water Resources should urgently consider building at least one dam on the Benue River for flow regulation… River Basin Development Authorities should be mobilised and facilitated to undertake river training and desilting of major rivers within their catchment.
“Promotion of climate-smart agricultural practices through upgrading Flood Early Warning Systems (FEWS), sensitisation and education of farmers. NiMET, NIHSA should be supported for improved data collection and analysis while NAERLS, FDAE and FDA be funded for sensitisation and dissemination of flood early warning systems”.
Agric minister, Dr. Abubakar receiving the report agreed with clause of the report that expressed disappointment on Nigeria being unable to fulfil his own promise of building a buffer dam against flood incidences like Cameroon her counterpart, saying that excess release of water from Lagdo dam from Cameroon is responsible for the flooding in the country.
“From the beginning there was supposed to be two dams, Cameroon built hers, but Nigeria refused to build hers,” he said.
Abubakar also in line with recommendation of the report suggested a need for building more dams for waters harvest to checkmate occurrences of flood against food security and environmental degradation of soil and its fertility to crops production.
