Water and fire are opposites. Each, in its turn, has sometimes been man’s best friend, and at other times, his worst enemy.
For instance, without fire, it would be unimaginable how those delicious meals from our kitchens would have had to be eaten raw. Fire is vital in many ways. But by the time you see devastation by fire, you will hate it to the core.
In the summer of that eventful year, when Majek Fashek released his record, “SEND DOWN THE RAIN”, he became an instant celebrity. But by the time the rains came, at the play of that record, Majek Fashek’s rating plummeted to the lowest ebb.
Some even wanted him dead. In times of disaster, we are quick to forget that water is useful to human existence; and that water makes up more than 70% of the human body. Time changes everything.
Hard as we may try, we can not halt the move of Providence. The rains will come when they would. They are here again. This time around, they have come with the greatest intensity ever. No area along the banks of Rivers Niger and Benue is spared. In Nigeria alone, close to a thousand lives have been lost at the last count. Many more are not accounted for. Thousands of homes have been devastated. Every available dry land has become an Internally Displaced Peoples’ (IDP) Camp. Many more are languishing in hospitals. Enormous farmlands have been destroyed.
The entire state of Bayelsa is virtually submerged underwater. In Yenagoa, the State Capital, even the dead are not spared. Admittedly, because of the stony grounds mixed with water, the graves at the cemetery were shallow. The floods have now come to wash up the corpses and they are floating everywhere. The consequent disaster from the imminent outbreak of epidemics is looming.
The entire surface of Patani in Delta State is totally submerged. There is no dry land. The people of the community have migrated to the top of the Niger Bridge, which is the only high land around. The scramble for space on the bridge has been such that right now, every single space there has been occupied and there is no more room on the bridge.
There are spices of goodness, even in things evil. This new home is safe because the East-West Highway has been effectively cut off by flood at the Ughelli end to the West and at the Sagbama/Adugbabiri end to the East. No vehicles ply the road now.
However, no one is talking about the health hazard to which the people are exposed – the rain beats them and the sun dries them. From the cold breeze that blows across the bridge, there is the threat of an imminent outbreak of epidemic. These are perhaps the forsaken people we have been looking for! Where do we begin helping them?
We are all Scientists, even those of us to whom the subject of Science is anathema. We are talking of Science as common sense. We also know that Science deals with observations.
This is one way of explaining that you do not need to have the same DNA as Albert Einstein (1879-1955) to know that in Nigeria, the rainy season comes once every year. You also do not need any rocket science to tell you that these rains with the accompanying floods are heavy every year: heavier every five years; and heaviest every ten years.
If we take the immediate 10-year cycle of 2012-2022, you will find that the rains and their concomitant flooding effects were heaviest in 2012 and 2022. What came in mid-term, 2017, was not as devastating. What came in the years in between was still less than those of 2017.
What we have before us is not an emergency. We always knew the rains would come. An emergency is a sudden occurrence that one did not expect. Why don’t we deal summarily with the flood once and for all instead of waiting for lamentation when the expected happens?
Nigeria has learnt to behave like my nephew of those days. During the few years he was in school, he always came first from the rear in the promotion examinations. He never admitted to failing. Each time we asked for his result, he would always say, “Em… John failed, Samuel failed, and Peter also failed…” He never said anything about himself.
Ask a Nigerian official about the problem of insecurity in Nigeria, he will reel out all the cases of mass shootings in America in the last fifty years; the mass murders in Australia in the last 70 years; and how many people have been killed with the knife in Canada and the UK since the late Queen Elizabeth II was born.
To the Nigerian Official, the problem of inflation and unemployment is a world phenomenon – they have inflation and unemployment in the USA, Australia and the UK. The perennial flooding in Nigeria is because the Cameroons opened their dam. What the heck?
When it mattered, the Cameroons built dams to deal with the perennial flood waters. The dams have been useful to them for irrigation and other purposes. When the dams are full, should they not open the valves to expel excess water?
For goodness sake, why can’t we build our own dams to take away excess flood that is bringing us sorrow every time? Come on!
Forever, we have been hearing of contracts that have been awarded for the dredging of Rivers Niger and Benue to make them navigable for commerce and to take away these sorrow-bearing flood waters. If they were doing real dredging since then, Rivers Niger and Benue would have long attained the size of some small oceans. What is happening? For how long will Nigeria continue to bear war with itself?
As we approach another election year, we demand that the issue of killer-floods should be brought to the front burner. Let each Presidential Candidate give us a blueprint of what he will do about it if elected.
Times like these demand seriousness. Sometimes we may need to swallow our pride. For instance, if that means going to beg the Cameroons to show us the way out of this quagmire, why not?
Those who can not stand the smoke should get out of the kitchen!
