Even though over 500 students of Government College at Bomadi, Bomadi local council of Delta State have been displaced by surging fast flowing floodwater from River Niger, which has overflowed its bank, it would be recalled that the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) had on first week of August, warned communities along the River Niger to evacuate immediately to safer ground.
This is as crops worth millions of naira were weekend destroyed by the overflowing River Niger. Farmers along the Niger route in Delta State and Anambra states have started counting losses as the flooding is hampering yam harvests.
It would be recalled that public and private schools in Delta who had resumed for the 2017/2018 academic session penultimate Monday, were displaced as floodwater submerged the school compound to about four feet deep.
Though there had been any report of a victim, Business Hilights gathered that trouble started when it was observed that all the access road to the school and neighbouring buildings were submerged to the point of drowning anybody that slips off the ground.
In a chat weekend with journalists in Asaba, a former member of the Post Primary Education Board (PPED), Mr. Thomas Ogobri, explained that the flood had threatened the entire community, adding that their children were no longer safe to attend classes pending when it will recede to safe limits.
The agency had warned in a statement it issued in Abuja on first Saturday in August which was made available to Business Hilights saying, flooding might occur at any moment following intense rainfall and rises in water level along the river-rime communities along the lower Niger basin.
The Director-General of the agency, Malam Muhammad Sani-Sidi, who gave the advice in the statement, said the agency had received alerts of the imminent flooding.
He said information given by the authorities in the Republic of Niger indicated the present water level in the river had reached a point that may result in flooding that could be compared with that of 2012.
According to him in the August statement, “Niger Basin Authority (NBA) notified Nigeria that rainy season, which started in the Middle Niger (Burkina Faso and Niger Republic) in June, has led to a gradual rise of the level of River Niger in Niamey, Niger Republic”.
“This high level of water in Niger Republic is already spreading to Benin Republic, and invariably, to Nigeria.’’
He further said that the level of water in all the hydrological monitoring stations across the country, as at Aug. 5, had already exceeded the corresponding values at that time.
