You see when war, pandemic, flooding, or an outbreak of disease happens, it disrupts the order of people’s lives.
Some people like their nations do not recover from what they have gone through because lives are lost, and sources of livelihood are also lost.
The Director-General of the Nigerian Meteorological Agency, Mansur Matazu, has said Nigeria lost $4.6 billion due to flooding.
Matazu revealed this while speaking at a workshop on increasing access to climate information services for national development and food security in Nigeria.
The workshop was jointly hosted in Abuja by NIMET in partnership with the Human and Environmental Development Agenda, HEDA.
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The Cost Of The Flooding
He quoted from a World Bank Survey report on the rapid assessment of cost implications of 2022 flood damages in the form of livelihoods, farmlands, and infrastructure.
Imagine a nation like ours losing a whooping sum of $4.6 billion to flooding. Just imagine for a second what this means in naira and kobo to the affected families and persons
Those whose sources of livelihoods were actually affected by this flooding.
Hmm…They say a word is enough for the wise, unfortunately, Nigeria has leaders who are just power mongers but are deaf and blind when the plight of the people.
Only God knows the things calculated by this survey to have arrived at such a humongous figure.
Yet, there were warnings from experts on the level of damage and loss that would attend to this flooding it even happened and the government did nothing.
Matazu added that the country was recovering from the devastation, and NiMet is working on a lasting solution to the flood to improve the agricultural sector in supporting the present agenda on food security in Nigeria.
Sources Of Livelihood Gone
The NiMet DG said, “The damage the flood caused livelihood, farmland, and infrastructure in the country is over $4.6 billion, and that is a significant weight on our GDP.“
Notwithstanding, we are recovering very fast, and the government has already commissioned a presidential committee to come up with lasting solutions to floods.
We also want to see how we can better utilize the flood waters, which mostly come up from within the country, to improve our agriculture.
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“The agency is working assiduously to align with the present government’s policy in achieving food security, sustainability, and availability to all Nigerians.”
In his remarks, the Executive Secretary of HEDA, Sulaimon Arigbabu, blamed the lack of access to climate information services for the losses suffered by farmers caused by flooding.
