Nigeria Can Better Manage Its Flooding Problem — if Its Leaders Want To

Tijani was part of the “high-powered delegates” sent by the Borno state Governor Babagana Zulum, to inspect the dam and assess its potential for overflows that could turn into serious flooding. Within a few days of Tijani’s comments, the flooding occurred.

This has (again) underlined the lack of preparedness that bedevils Nigeria when it comes to flood management, as well as the need for proactive measures. Last week, the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency (NIHSA) announced that 11 states across the south-south and middle belt regions are currently susceptible to flooding. While the agency warned residents of these states, there have been no statements on how the government is planning ahead.

“I would just say as a general rule, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail, and it’s the same thing with flooding,” Doyinsola Ogunye tells OkayAfrica. Ogunye, who runs foundations that span across coastal and aquatic biodiversity restoration, agriculture and afforestation, says the conversation about flooding in Nigeria always occurs after an event has happened, adding that there’s severe underplanning from the government’s side.

When the Maiduguri flooding happened, Nigeria’s water resources and sanitation minister, Joseph Utsev,said it was caused by the overflow of the Ngadda River, a tributary of Alau Dam, due to torrential rainfall that started in late August. “Alau Dam did not collapse. It was one of the dykes that could not hold excess water coming from the tributaries; so it overflowed the dam,” Utsev said.

However, multiple reports are contesting that statement. Nigerian news and social impact publication HumAnglepublished a report that showed that longstanding neglect of the damages to Alau Dam, shown in Google Earth Pro images, is to blame for the flooding incident. HumAngle’s report also stated that over ₦300 million ($186,000) had been disbursed to six construction companies between 2018 and 2024, according to data from Govspend, a public portal dedicated to tracking the federal government’s spending.

Also, according to Federation Account Allocation Committee data published by the National Bureau of Statistics, Borno state received over ₦800 million (nearly $500,000) from the federal government’s ecological fund between January and June 2024. The money is meant for proactive projects to mitigate the impact of environmentally hazardous events like flooding. However, less than 2.5 percent of the money received had been spent on flood control in the same timeframe.

So far, no account has been given for the rest of the money received by the Borno state government. It looks like another classic Nigerian case of gross neglect and misappropriation of taxpayer money by leaders. It’s made even worse by the fact that there were warnings dating years back.

In 2015, several members of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the Ramat Polytechnic in Maiduguri published a paper in the European Scientific Journal, outlining the problems (and prospects) of Alau Dam. In the paper, the authors noted that people living close to the dam have “been subjected to several hardships as a result of flood occurrences and other devastations caused by the dam.”

The paper, which cataloged a flash flood incident in 1994 and another flooding in 2012, recommended that the Borno state government should ensure annual environmental impact reports for Alau Dam, as well as “an expansion program for the dam and a de-sedimentation scheme of the dam floor as well. This will reduce the hazard of impurity in the water and also mitigate to a great extent the overflow of water into farmlands and settlements.”

Being prepared also starts from public education, Ogunye adds. “There has to be a lot of orientation as to what causes flooding because some of it is manmade.” She relates to the indiscriminate dumping of waste materials in drainages that can play a part in worsening the effects of heavy rainfall.

Then there’s climate change, which has exacerbated harsh weather conditions across the world. Earlier this year, parts of a few countries in East Africa had to deal with flooding during their own rainy season, a foreshadowing of what is currently going on in parts of Nigeria. “It has been called a climate crisis. Imagine if you're having an emergency and you're not doing anything about an emergency, so we’re literally sitting on gunpowder right now,” Ogunye says, adding that there are no stringent policies being enforced to prevent flooding.

At the last UN Climate Change Conference, the Nigerian government said it funded a whopping 422 of its 590 party delegates, among a total contingent of 1,411 delegates. The news was met with sweeping backlash by the public, as a waste of public funds amidst a cost of living crisis, especially as the role of some funded delegates was unclear.

Ogunye argues that the impact of these conferences are still very muted, compared to the chatter that happens. “I feel like there’s so much talk and so many conferences and, no offense to people that go for these conferences, it will be good to convert those targets into tangible actions. If we’re going for a climate summit, there should be actionable plans by the government and stakeholders to hold them accountable.”