NEMA advices people living near River Benue to relocate immediately

People living around the River Benue have been advised to relocate immediately because of the possibility of flooding.

This call was made bh the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), who recently confirmed that a total of 185 peraons had died from floods in various parts of the country.

The NEMA spokesman, Manzo Ezekiel, disclosed this in a statement on Friday in Abuja.

PlanetPulse.NG had reported series of flooding situations recently, especially in the northern parts of the country, with hundreds of people displaced and thousands of houses and farmlands submerged.

Ezekiel warned that Adamawa and eight other states face the risk of flood due to their proximity to River Benue.

Other states are Taraba, Benue, some parts of Nasarawa, Kogi, and parts of Anambra, Enugu, Edo, and Delta.

He noted that water from the Lagdo Dam in Cameroon is usually released around this time of the year, saying the Federal Government was yet to receive any notification from the East African nation.

The statement read: “As of yesterday, the number [of deaths] increased to about 185. All the numbers of persons displaced, houses affected, and persons affected have [also] increased because our emergency operation centre works 24 hours.

“We’re in touch with our field officers, getting information about what is happening, and because the flooding is something that is still ongoing; the number has changed, the number of dead has risen.

“It (water) has not reached the red level yet, but it’s at the point of warning that the water level is rising. People should prepare. I’m talking about the River Benue.

“So, the other thing is that if the water level is getting to the red point, we know that there’s a danger.

“Even if such information has come, at least, I’m not aware of it yet, but normally it is around this time of the year that the issue of the release of water from Lagdo Dam comes up.

“But the flooding that has been recorded in Nigeria is from the amount of rainfall that has been recorded internally in the country, so the rainfalls and the tributaries of these two major rivers (Niger and Benue) are the ones that have been responsible for most of the flooding in Nigeria so far.”