From Noah Ocheni, Lokoja
A Devastating Flood which look like a recantation of the 2012 flood has again rendered thousands homeless as houses were submerges and major roads leading to the eastern flank of the country has been taken over by flood.
On Sunday it was discovered that one of the major road, old market road and Ganaja-Ajaokuta road have been submerged by River Niger.
Initially, trucks and Hilux vans were the only vehicles that were taking the risks of manoeuvring through the submerged roads but the story has changed over the night as no vehicular movement noticed today ( Monday) except through the 500 housing units.
Many passengers were stranded while those who could not wait had no option than to join canoe to cross to the other side of the road and then took commercial motorcycles to the motor park in continuation of their journey.
At Adakolo Estate and Adankolo Extension, many houses have been deserted by owners as they have moved to safer place.
Some residents who spoke with our correspondent lamented that they don’t have any place to relocate to as they still manage to sleep in their flooded houses while others relocated back to the village untill situation improves.
Meanwhile, the Managing Director Hydroelectric Power Producing Areas Development Commission (HYPPADEC), Alhaji Abubakar Sadiq Yelwa, has appealed to Kogi State government to upscale its awareness and enlightenment campaigns to riverine communities to educate them in strategies to avert or minimise effects of floods.
Managing Director of the Commission, Alhaji Abubakar Sadiq Yelwa, who made the call at the flag-off of distribution of relief materials to flood victims over the weekend in Koton-Karfe said the people needed technical information on the menace.
Yelwa said perennial flooding of the riverine communities with the attendant loss of means if livelihood was assuming an alarming proportion.
He said that since communities were not needing warnings like, “Don’t build on water channels or flood planes, avoid blockage of drainages that can aggravate the effect of flood, the best option would be to avail them technical information on this to avert or minimise the natural disaster.”
Represented by Alhaji Jimoh Haruna Gabi, Director, Finance and Administration in the Commission, the Managing Director said, “This advice became necessary because of the frequency of this flood in our communities.
“Today, we have brought in here relief materials that represent a widow’s mite of the commission. It is not as if we can really feed everybody but we have shown kind gesture to everybody.”
The Managing Director, however, expressed appreciation to Governor Yahaya Bello for always being there for the Commission adding that in all the programmes of HYPPADEC the governor “has never failed us.”
At the Koton-Karfe Centre, 51 household victims from Kogi Local Government Area, Bassa and Lokoja Local Government Areas out of the 113 victims from the 10 affected the three councils received palliatives.
The relief materials include mattresses, rice, millet, beans, noodles, detergents as well as a medical outreach to address diseases and ailments arising from the effects of the flood which has consistently devastated the communities in the last two weeks.
