FEMA warns of severe flood
By Ukpono Ukpong
Man drowns in Abuja
Director-General, FCT Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Alhaji Idris Abbas, has strongly warned Federal Capital Territory (FCT) residents to avoid flooded areas to avert danger.
The warning came as the body of one Mr. Garba Joseph, a 43-year-old from Akoka-Edo of Edo State, was recovered by FEMA’s Search and Rescue team following an intensive two days search from a flooded river around TradeMoore Estate, Lugbe, in Abuja, Daily Times gathered.
Abbas reiterated the need for residents to adhere to instructions and early warnings from relevant authorities, adding that attitudinal change is the key to reducing disasters to the barest in the FCT.
Narrating the incident, an eye witness account (one of FEMA’s volunteer/ vanguard Kenneth Chima) who captured it on video said: “They were four men that tried walking through the water and I kept warning them to go back.
Three of them went back but only this man insisted on crossing. Unfortunately the water overpowered him and washed him away.”
Alh. Idriss decried the increasing rate of flood in the FCT which he attributed to residents’ apathy towards government’s directives and early warnings.
This is also despite FEMA’s consistent sensitizations based on NIMET & NIHSA predictions of torrential rainfall and dangers of flooding.
NIHSA’s in its recent predictions warned against torrential rainfall and flooding from August.
The DG said that since then, the agency has been embarking on aggressive sensitization of residents to educate them on ways of preventing the impending flood.
He said FEMA is conducting the exercise in five different indigenous languages in the FCT using different media channels.
“Furthermore, we recently organized a meeting with our Volunteers, Vanguards and Divers from all the area Councils within the FCT to educate them on how they can sensitize their people on how to prevent disasters to minimize loss of life and property.
We have embarked on community to community flood sensitization campaigns in the FCT and also mounted billboards at all the flood prone points warning off and cautioning residents from these danger areas.
“Most of the deaths we have recorded in the past from flood in the FCT were as a result of non-compliance to instructions and early warnings,” said Idriss.
Furthermore, he appealed to residents to desist from unwholesome environmental practices especially indiscriminate waste disposal on waterway, building on flood plains, as these could lead to flooding.
READ ALSO: Jaiz, MPAC host webinar on options for this year’s hajj
He further called on community leaders, religious leaders to be charged with the responsibility of sensitizing their subjects, especially those who are living close to flood prone areas to move to higher grounds to avoid being washed away by flood water.
“Some of the houses affected by flood are houses that their owners tried to extend the fence of the house to the embankments of the rivers close to them, just to add a few meters to their originally approved plot,” he said.
He called on developers to respect the Abuja Master plan and follow due process before embarking on any building project to avoid endangering lives and properties in the FCT, stressing that disaster management is a collective effort from government and the governed.
