It’s the climate! …The responsibility to respond to climate shocks and their impact remains one for global conversations. The UN Climate Change Conference 2022 (UNFCCC COP 27) in Egypt is in November but the pessimism remains largely to be seen, especially as little to no progress has been made since COP22. However, Nigeria should lead the Global South coalition efforts to demand accountability from the global community, especially the developed countries regarding their climate commitments.
There is a pulse article that explains why a dam in Cameroon causes devastating floods almost yearly since 2012. The question should really not be why the flood is happening, but why the floods continue to be more devastating since 2012. This article explains the why in five points and puts things in a sharper perspective, emphasising the relevant areas of responsibility for government stakeholders and citizens.
First, Nigerians living in flood-prone areas are not aware that they should organise better and respond to these disasters, while all Nigerians should demand for better crisis management of natural disasters: The state governments continue to earn revenue from the flood-affected areas, and state governors and federal agencies will never be questioned over their handling of the flood crisis. State governors are not even questioned over their inability to pay salaries, which are already covered by federal allocations in some states, talk less of flooding, for which a convenient excuse is the lack of funding, the structure of response to natural disasters or blame-shifting to either the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) or a dam in Cameroon.
In 2012 and 2013, there were no tenement waivers or tax rebates for the thousands of Nigerian properties or businesses affected by the 2012 floods. The states earned revenue from the flooded locations. Ordinary Nigerians are obviously the biggest losers. Also, the burden of this loss is not evenly distributed among the state governments or federal agencies who neither receive reprimand nor evaluation for their action or inaction. The Nigerians in flood-affected areas are not even entitled to any disaster recovery financial package. In 2012, Nigeria lost N2.6 trillion to the flood disaster, seven million people were displaced, 597,476 houses were damaged and 363 were killed, with these numbers expected to increase by at least 45% this year, going by current indicators. This episode will surely repeat itself after the 2022 floods, with Nigerians to be charged tenements for the same property after the floods recede in 2023. Nigerians living in the flood affected areas should secure their properties by investing in joint storage facilities to keep their property ahead of flood incidents, while cooperatives and businesses should obtain insurance against force majeure. Not all Nigerians can simply move out of the affected areas.
Secondly, states should be prevailed upon to stop allocating land in designated flood plains, to maintain dredging and waste management efforts, and rethink incentives to invest more in flood mitigation efforts: Land allocation is clearly a state government’s responsibility, and the periodic nature of the floods (before the 2012 floods, the last massive flooding was over 40 years ago) should not be an excuse for the greed by these administrators, who choose revenue over the safety of their citizens. Citizens, who despite being informed and warned early, also choose to remain in the flood affected areas till the very last minute and by then it is too late. The reasons often cited for this include the security of their property and lack of clarity regarding where to go.
Conditions in the designated relief camps and coordination plans are not firmed up, leaving citizens to ignore camps and opt instead for living with families and friends in areas not affected by the flooding, further exacerbating the vulnerability limits of the entire population in the affected states.
The Federal Government can do more to protect lives and property by declaring a State of Emergency, including using military reserves or paramilitary formations to support and enforce evacuations. Such evacuation measures could include temporary warehousing or mobile storage units to preserve infrastructure and could be funded by charging a percentage of the value of the commodity being stored. The Federal Government should also explore its constitutional powers to address the ever-recurrent challenges of construction in floodplains and flood-prone areas, to prevent land allocation by state governments. The Attorney General should consider available legal options and advise accordingly.
Flood resilience programmes have substantial cost implications, and there is yet to be a proper discussion on how best to fund them. In Ekiti, it cost billions of naira to protect three of the local government areas at risk, which moderated the impact of the recent flooding. However, such funding models are not sustainable. The current emphasis on state and local response to such disasters need to change and this change should be championed by the Federal Government.
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Thirdly, the Federal Government bears a large portion of the responsibility to mitigate and respond to the national disaster, and should really just do so. The following practical measures need to be taken:
(a.) The funding for natural disaster mitigation and response needs to change from its flawed approach: Under the prevailing revenue allocation formula, 2.32% of derivation funds is set aside for ecology and disaster management, and out of this amount a paltry sum of N336 billion was for the first half of 2022, which was not even up to 1.6% of the N2.6 trillion damage caused by the 2012 floods. The 36 states and the FCT get 0.72%, and the 774 local governments get 0.6%, adding to 1.32%, and leaving a balance of 1% to the government of the federation. NEMA takes 20% of the amount allocated to the Federal Government. The North East Development Commission (NEDC) collects 10%, the National Agricultural Land Development Authority (NALDA) gets 10%, and the National Agency for the Great Green Wall (GGW) 0.5%, leaving 0.55 of 1% to the government at the centre for ecological protection and disaster management. Herein lies the issue. Natural disaster management should be based on efficiency, and it would be dubious, for instance, to ask that the Green Wall Initiative, Nigeria’s line of defence against desert encroachment in the Sahara, to be funded by all 36 states. The same principle needs to be applied to flood management and national disaster management planning. A federal relief assistance fund mechanism jointly managed by the federal and state governments, with a funding formula, should be put in place. This is not to be confused with ecological funds.
(b.) States should be allowed to build, manage and benefit from physical flood prevention and mitigation infrastructure: The Federal Government still maintains the responsibility and bulk of the decisions regarding the provision and management of critical infrastructure, including dams, waterways, power generation, and distribution. The legal framework for independent power projects is here. The downstream flood-affected states will definitely be incentivised to build a dam if they benefit from the power generation, job opportunities, and others that accrue from this. The climate impact is debatable, given that the areas affected by flooding receive significant rainfall. However, the other range of issues associated with dam construction, in general, will remain. A dam directly funded by the states could generate power, support irrigation and create jobs and earn revenue for the states.
(c.) NEMA and the national disaster response and recovery mechanism is restructured along national disaster response priorities, rather than geography, and should be properly decentralised. NEMA, as it is currently constituted, remains ineffective, likewise the State Emergency Management Authorities (SEMAs). The funding for relief efforts is a recipe for disaster itself, especially where such funds could be put to adequate use before disasters occur. The concept of a federally supported, state managed, locally executed disaster response and recovery is desirable but not yet feasible. An interim action plan to coordinate these efforts around federal and state priorities should be developed with a transition plan of support to local governments. Alternatively, pilot programmes targeting funding for local governments with clear performance indicators demonstrate how local actions can work to improve resilience to flooding and coastal erosion, similar to the State Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability Programme for Result (SFTAS). This could be explored.
Fourthly, Cameroon should be left out of the current conversation regarding the present flooding, as advance notice was sent regarding the pending release of the floodwaters. Cameroon should not have built the dam, and that’s the only part where the Cameroonians take the blame.
Nigeria implied that it was able to handle the flooding situation at its end but did not fulfill its own end of the bargain by building the dam. The Nigerian government also receives an adequate warning about the dam being filled, save for 2018, when there was no ‘early’ notice.
Why didn’t Cameroon close the dam for longer?
The worst case scenario will have been a dam failure, which Nigerians will surely wish never happened, as it will surpass the largest dam disaster in recorded history. To compare, the failure of the Banqiao dam on the Ru River in China’s Zhumadian City in 1974, led to over 492 million cubic meters of water being emptied out in massive volumes and this resulted in over 171,000 deaths. The Cameroon Lagdo dam reservoir is 7,800 million, and cubic metres that are 63 times larger than the Banqiao dam.
Fifth, It’s the climate! Annual estimates by the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency (NIHSA) of expected floods using previous data and accounting for percentages, remain insufficient for the type of climate change impact event, which saw one-third of Pakistan under water this year. Hence, the best estimates will have still fallen short of whatever response was planned. At the point of impact, NIWA gauge readers in Lokoja confirmed that the 2012 flood level was 12.84 meters, whereas that of 2022 is reading 13.22 meters, a 44% increase from the 2012 floods. The responsibility to respond to climate shocks and their impact remains one for global conversations. The UN Climate Change Conference 2022 (UNFCCC COP 27) in Egypt is in November but the pessimism remains largely to be seen, especially as little to no progress has been made since COP22. However, Nigeria should lead the Global South coalition efforts to demand accountability from the global community, especially the developed countries regarding their climate commitments.
Jubril Shittu is CEO of the Public and Private Development Centre (PPDC) in Abuja.
