‘Maiduguri Dam Collapse Was Completely Avoidable’

The Renevlyn Development Initiative (RDI) has linked the collapse of the Alau Dam in Borno and the inundation of farmlands and hundreds of homes in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, to a total disconnect among the coordinating emergency response agencies of government.

The executive director of RDI, Philip Jakpor, made its position known in a statement made available to LEADERSHIP in Jos. The statement comes on the heels of the collapse of the dam and inundation of 70 percent of Maiduguri.

According to him, the flooding of the communities was said to have begun about a week ago but reached its peak in the early hours of Tuesday, displacing residents of Fori, Galtimari, Gwange, Bulabulin, and other communities.

Jakpor further argued that the dam’s collapse was completely avoidable, adding that the incident represented a failure in governance at all levels since the floods had hitherto been predicted by the

Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NIMET) and the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency (NIHSA).
Yet, no concrete preemptive actions or flood management plan was implemented to safeguard life and property.

“Maiduguri may just be the starting point. We had warned severally that the lacklustre approach of the federal and the state governments that have collected about N40 billion in Ecological Funds this year alone to addressing perennial floods would lead to avoidable catastrophic incidents like this”.

He also explained that perhaps the attention to this case is only because Maiduguri, the state capital, is involved. If it had been in the remote communities, there would be less alarm stresses that this is completely damning for the government.”

Jakpor maintained that a dam does not just collapse in a day without notice. With the intense rains, proactive management would have known that water must be released gradually from the dam to avoid a breach. But in this case, the water had reached a crescendo before the management of the dam raised the alarm.

The RDI boss pointed out that someone or some people must be held accountable for the failure to prevent the dam’s collapse and the monumental losses that the state has recorded and would incur in the days ahead.

He pointed out that Nigerians are yet to see effective and proactive coordination between the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and their state counterparts in response to flooding incidents.

“Unfortunately, we only read how the emergency management agencies struggle to share palliatives when such disasters would have been prevented in the first place.”

He urged other states of the federation to take a cue from the incident and take proactive measures to avoid similar happening, going further to alert that noting that in the Niger Delta region, for instance, monster floods are predicted to occur.

“The Alau Dam collapse is a tragedy that could have been avoided. Until we take preemptive measures to address the fallouts of climate change, we will only continue suffering economic losses and needless loss of lives,” Jakpor stated.