Flood: Channelisation of waterways will commence in affected communities ― Niger govt

Niger State Government has said it has started the channelisation of the waterways in some of the communities affected by flood in Bosso and Chanchaga local government areas of the state over the weekend, adding that due to paucity of funds, that it could not be done at once but in phases.

The state’s acting governor, Alhaji Ahmed Mohammad Ketso stated this in an interactive session with the newsmen on Sunday in Minna , the state capital, after his sympathy visit to some of the victims of the flood disasters in the affected areas saying, “we don’t have the resources to do it at once, but we are already and we have already taken the designs of the places even before the unfortunate flood disaster that ravaged Minna, and its environs on Saturday and the problem is not something that anyone had envisaged.”

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He noted that when the incumbent All Progressives Congress( APC) led- administration of Governor Abubakar Sani Bello , came on board in 2015, that it met some of these problems on ground, highlighting that government had already taken the designs of the places and it was committed to doing the channelisation in phases in order to alleviate the sufferings of the people living in the affected communities in the two local governments of the state.

Ketso, however, reminded the victims of the Saturday’s flood disasters that the problem was not caused by the government, while describing it as a natural disaster that was not envisaged by anyone.

Speaking further, he said, “as a responsible and responsive government that government would not sit down and fold its arms about what happened on Saturday, and while the people of the state suffered a great loss of lives and properties.

“This is why I have mobilized officials of the Niger State Emergency Management Agency( NSEMA) and their counterparts in the ministry of the environment to come and pay sympathy visits to members of the communities affected by the flood disaster.

“And we were there to sympathise with the people of the communities and at the same time to to take inventory of all that happened so that government would now help the victims by giving them some incentives to cushion the effects of the hardships on them before the lasting solution can be made.”

He thereby described as normal for the people affected by the flood disasters to be aggressive and demand for urgent intervention by government to cushion the effects of the hardships on them, when such unfortunate incidents had occurred anywhere.

The Acting Governor, however, stated that after the incident, that government would try to sensitise the people and counseled them that the problem was not caused by government, adding that the problem was caused by God and also as a result of human errors of either building houses on the waterways or dumping refuse on the water channels, thereby blocking the free flow of the floods whenever it rained heavily the affected communities.

He also added, “we have directed NSEMA officials to take the inventory of all the areas affected by the floods, including the people that were also affected, with the view that the government can now intervene with some little things so that they can be able to have some comforts pending when the government can be able to intervene on the water channelization.”