Flood: Atiku tasks Buhari on relief fund
Sopuruchi Onwuka
Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has called on the curling government controlled by the All Progress Congress (APC) to quickly establish a flood relief fund to maintain a steady intervention in flood related disasters in the country.
He said the flood relief fund should be a copy of the covid-19 fund created by the same government during the heat of the pandemic period in 2020. He said the flood relief fund should however be focused on helping victims hit by the floods.
The Oracle Today reports the Minster of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajia Sadiya Umar Farouq, as saying that impact of flooding in the year includes death of 600 people, injury on 2,400 people, destruction of 200,000 homes and damage to 332,000 hectares of roads and infrastructure in the country.
Updates from the ministry at the weekend showed that some two million people have also been affected by flooding.
The minister pointed out that the flood has destroyed some 600,000 hectares of farmland, and jeopardized food supply with bleak harvest outlook.
The government has blamed the floods on heavy rain and water release from a dam in neighbouring Cameroon.
The tributaries of River Benue and River Niger in the Niger Delta form the impact areas of the extreme downpours and surges from the neighboring countries.
Consequently, Bayelsa and Rivers states have been worst hit in the recent surge of floods, leaving communities on the Atlantic coastlines almost submerged and forcing families out of their homes into refugee camps.
Public, private and relief organizations have activated intervention measures in the states, pushing relief materials to assist people who lost their homes and property to the disaster.
Presidential hopefuls in the upcoming 2023 pools including Mr Peter Obi of the Labour party and Atiku Abubakar of the PDP have since paid condolences and made donations towards providing succor the flood victims.
Atiku, who paid a trip to oil-producing Bayelsa state, described the floods as part of the manifestations of climate change meaning that it might become a regular seasonal feature. And to anticipate the fallouts, he said that government should immediately establish a Flood Disaster Relief Fund.
He said that the proposed fund should be modeled after the 2020 covid-19 intervention fund pooled by corporate and philanthropic organizations in the country.
Critics have accused the federal government of being slow to help flood victims. President Muhammadu Buhari has given his cabinet 90 days to develop a plan to prevent flooding in future.
Experts say climate change is a factor, while defective infrastructure and poor planning, including a failure by Nigeria to complete a dam of its own that was supposed to backstop the Cameroonian one, had worsened the disaster.
