NIGERIA-ENVIRONMENT: Preparing for the Flood

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

LAGOS, Apr 24 1997 (IPS) - Throughout this month, people in low-lying neighbourhoods here have been tackling the drains in their areas, clearing them of any debris that risks clogging them.

The exercise has nothing to do with National Environment Day, which falls on the last Saturday of each month. It’s simply that the rainy season has set in and, with it, the risk of floods if the rainwater is blocked from running off.

The rainy season begins in April and lasts until September, but the peak period runs from May to July and it is in these months that flooding usually occurs.

“We are getting set for the rains,” Ojo Alatise told IPS in Ilaje suburb here. “We don’t have to wait for the monthly national environmental day to clear our gutters. We have to do it almost on a daily basis to avoid the perennial flood that accompanies rain in Lagos.”

“Not that this will stop the floods totally, but it will at least allow the drains to be free and flood waters to flow easily to the main drainage system,” added Alatise.

He has taken precautionary measures because, during last year’s rainy season, he came home from work one day to find some of his household items floating in his flooded room.

“I moved into this apartment during the dry season in December 1995 not knowing the area is prone to flood, so it caught me unawares,” he says. “But this year, apart from clearing the drains in front of the house, I have constructed racks to keep important items in the room during this rainy period.”

People in Mafoluku suburb are also clearing their drainage ditches. Sam Olarenwaju, who lives there, says a nasty experience he had in 1994 taught him not to take any chances.

“When flood came visiting one early morning in 1994, before the construction of the main drainage here, we were caught unawares,” Olarenwaju told IPS. “Everybody had slept before the surge came to wake us from our beds. We never expected it and when it came, we were unable to rescue any of our property.

“I lost all that I had to the flood, my television set, kitchen utensils, money and other smaller items were washed away. Only the mattress, the wardrobe and executive chairs were left and I had to leave them in the open for days, under the watchful eyes of my wife and children, to dry.”

It’s not only property that has been lost during floods here. Some people have died of electrocution after damaged overhead electrical cables dropped into flooded streets. There have also been reports of children drowning in ditches.

Environmentalists say most of Lagos is below sea level and that the residential areas located on land reclaimed from the sea are especially prone to the floods that occur here each year. However, they feel that if people are environmentally aware, flooding may be reduced.

Blocked drains due to indiscriminate dumping of disused items like tyres, plastics, nylons and clothing, have been blamed for floods in most towns in this West African nation. Building experts feel that the problem is also caused by improper drainage systems and the illegal building of houses on drains in Lagos.

“The existing drainages in the state were not constructed according to scientific principles,” says consulting engineer Jide Soyede. “There should have been a network of drainages with the narrower ones emptying into the wider ones and finally into a stream or other major outlet but this is not the case.

“Instead what you have here are dead-end gutters that don’t function.”

He says things were different in the sixties: “At that time the gutters flowed. People cleaned them out regularly and the practice of throwing garbage into the gutters was not a common thing. Today, things have deteriorated. Not only do people throw garbage into the gutters, they rarely clean them and even build houses on the drainage.”

It is this situation that led the Nigerian government in 1986 to introduce a monthly National Environmental Sanitation Day, during which people are expected to clean their surroundings and the drains around their buildings.

On that day, movement is restricted between 7 a.m and 10 a.m except for persons from the essential services. These include medical personnel, the military, police, firemen, journalists, telecommunications staff and officials of the National Electricity Authority.

Violators of the restriction are tried in mobile courts set up for that purpose and fined 200 naira (the equivalent of 2.50 U.S. dollars) on conviction.

Apart from people’s efforts to clear the gutters, two major projects that involve the rehabilitation of roads, and the construction or repair of drains in the city, may help ease the flood problem here.

One of the projects is being done by the Lagos state government, while the other is being financed from the Petroleum Trust Fund, set up by the federal government to use profits from oil price increases to improve social amenities.