Opinion: Nigeria’s Water Music – Abdul Mahmud

By Abdul Mahmud

There are moments when nature appears to speak in a destructive language that governments understand only after the damage has been done. Nigeria is living through such a moment again.

Across the country, water has moved beyond the banks assigned to it by maps and engineering drawings, entering homes, swallowing roads, disrupting schools and businesses, isolating communities and turning familiar streets into waterways. From communities along the River Benue basin to the low-lying coastal and littoral states of the South, the country is being reminded, with considerable force, that flooding is no longer an occasional occurrence to be endured at the height of the rainy season; it has become one of the defining environmental emergencies of contemporary Nigeria. The warnings were there. The Nigerian Meteorological Agency had issued a probable flash-flood risk alert for the third dekad of September, covering 21 to 30 September, specifically to provide stakeholders with information for proactive intervention in areas where rapid surface runoff and flash flooding were considered possible. Earlier advisories had also identified Rivers, Benue, Bayelsa, Delta, Cross River, Akwa Ibom and other states among areas requiring attention. The problem, once again, is not simply whether Nigeria possesses the scientific capacity to foresee danger.

The harder question is what happens between receiving a warning and acting upon it.
In Edo State, the situation around the Ojirami dam should command particular attention. Heavy rainfall has caused the dam to overflow into the Enwan community in Akoko-Edo, destroying an oil mill and causing severe losses to a poultry farmer who reportedly lost 1,400 birds. Floodwater has entered homes, damaged businesses, disrupted schooling and made access to farms difficult. Residents have expressed fears about what might happen if the dam itself fails, given the consequences for communities downstream. A dam does not need to collapse before it becomes a public emergency. Once water begins to overwhelm its capacity, the question of structural integrity ceases to belong exclusively to engineers and becomes a matter of public safety.

Port Harcourt has provided the most dramatic images of the present crisis. After days of persistent rainfall, large parts of the Rivers State capital have been submerged. Reports from the city describe flooding around New GRA, Eneka, Eliozu, Rukpokwu, Peter Odili Road, Ozuoba and other areas, with water entering houses and swallowing vehicles and roads. In some places, residents have had to move their belongings to higher ground while others have found themselves stranded inside their homes. The Rivers State Government had already begun distributing relief materials earlier in September, while urging residents not to block drains and waterways and calling on developers to stop constructing over drainage channels. Relief is necessary, but the recurrence of the same crisis should force a harder conversation about why relief so often arrives after the water.

The spectacle becomes stranger still when the floodwater becomes a habitat for creatures that normally belong somewhere else. Reports and videos circulating from flooded communities have shown snakes and other reptiles such as crocodiles appearing in places where people ordinarily walk, drive and live. The arrival of such reptilian wildlife is not a curiosity to be consumed as a social-media entertainment. Flooding displaces animals just as it displaces people, forcing them towards higher ground and into spaces occupied by human beings. In a city already struggling with contaminated water, overflowing sewage and floating refuse, the appearance of reptiles should be treated as another warning about the ecological consequences of allowing urban environments to deteriorate.
Perhaps, the most unsettling images are those of children swimming and dancing in the floodwaters. There is something almost beautiful in the sight of children discovering music in water that has brought misery to their communities. They dance as though the flood were a celebration, turning catastrophe into play because childhood has a remarkable capacity to transform whatever surrounds it into an occasion for joy. But the beauty of those images should not blind adults to the danger contained in them. Floodwater can conceal open drains, broken infrastructure, sewage, sharp objects, electrical hazards and disease-causing organisms.
What looks like innocence may become a tragedy with very little warning.

Nigeria must also resist the temptation to explain every flood as the consequence of climate change and leave the matter there. Climate change is altering rainfall patterns and increasing the likelihood of extreme weather events, but rainfall becomes disaster through the choices countries make about land use, drainage, urban planning, waste disposal and the maintenance of infrastructure. Port Harcourt’s flooding has been linked by reports to blocked waterways, poor planning, indiscriminate dumping and construction on areas that once served as natural pathways for stormwater. Climate change may increase the water. Human decisions often determine where the water goes. The present floods should consequently be treated as a test of the Nigerian state’s capacity to convert knowledge into prevention. Meteorological warnings are valuable only when they reach communities in time and are translated into practical action. A warning that does not trigger inspection of vulnerable dams, evacuation plans, drainage clearance, emergency shelters and local communication becomes little more than information sitting safely inside an official document.

The children dancing in Port Harcourt’s floodwaters have unknowingly supplied the country with images that should stay with us. There is music in water, certainly, but water also remembers gravity, geography and neglect; it will find the blocked channel, the neglected drainage, the low-lying house and the weakened embankment and enter wherever human beings have failed to prepare for its arrival. Preparation begins long before the rain arrives. Drainage channels must be cleared and waterways kept open. Embankments need regular inspection, while dams require proper maintenance.

Communities must also receive warnings early enough for people to act on them. Flood forecasts should be treated as matters of public safety, not seasonal announcements that attract attention only when the water has already begun to rise. Construction on floodplains, blocked drainage, and the absence of credible evacuation plans turn heavy rainfall into a disaster waiting to happen. Water merely reveals the consequences of decisions made long before the first drop falls.

Nigeria should listen before the music becomes a dirge.