Mr. David Hundeyin a journalist with one of the leading Nigerian online news outlet WASH, notes that flooding in Nigeria and Cameroonian governments has been an undelaying time bomb for sometime.

Hundeyin, noted that the absence of adequate water resources to support growing agricultural pressure in northern Cameroon, forced the government of Ahmadou Ahidjo to build a dam on the Benue River which would supply hydropower to the region and allow for the irrigation of 15,000 hectares of farmland.

The dam was completed in 1982, with a projection that it would have a downstream effect on Nigeria, something that led to a bilateral agreement between the two countries. According to the agreement signed in 1977, a shock absorber dam called the Dasin Hausa Dam would be constructed in the modern-day Adamawa State of Nigeria.

In addition to preventing flooding, this massive dam was also meant to add 300 MW of hydropower to the national grid and irrigate roughly 150,000 hectares of farmland in Adamawa, Benue, and Taraba states of Nigeria.

However a dispute arose between the two countries, with each accusing the other of a breach of contract, depending on who is telling the story. The project didn’t take off from the drawing board let alone even achieving 90 percent of its completion after being halted at its inception.

40 years later, the local populations continue to bear the brunt of the failure of Nigerian government to construct the Dasin Hausa dam, and flooding of the Benue estuary and the Lokoja confluence area has become an annual event.

This failure by the Nigerian subsequent governments; is what has resulted in the annual destruction of lives and property during rainy seasons.

This year’s floods in Nigeria have been described by environmental experts as the worst in exactly a decade ago. The media has been bashed severally for underreporting the 2022 flooding in almost half of Nigeria. Notwithstanding, climate experts have been salient on the failures of the Nigerian government’s response, which has been predictable blaming Cameroon for the activities at Lagbo Dam.

Let alone this historical challenge, seasonal flooding has become a perennial problem in Nigeria with its attendant challenges that ranged from health to food security challenges and many more.

Nigeria’s floods usually start in areas that are predominantly agricultural based that are also known for being the food basket of the nation, ravaging their agricultural farmlands, swallowing their barns of food storage, and drowning the vulnerable humans and animals, leaving a daunting experience on the livelihood of the affected communities for a long term.

The most vulnerable habitats in Nigeria during the perennial flooding events so far have been the river line communities and settlements. Flooding washes away even the aquatic lives downstream; and causes buildings to be buried under water for months or collapse or develop permanent structural deficiencies that render them unsafe for habitation even after the floods recede.

Researchers have found during several studies, that flood conditions affected the food security for about 12 percent of people who were already experiencing food insecurity. Among the impacts were devastating increases in food insecurity, but also some beneficial changes that ameliorated such insecure conditions.

In Nigeria, flood exposure prevents smallholder farmers from recovering their livelihoods which are essential to maintaining food security. The dangerous effects of this have begun to manifest enormously and the living standard of an average Nigerian have crashed to the decades’ lowest ebb. It is noted that in Nigeria, second to droughts; floods have produced some of the greatest agricultural production losses low-and-middle-incomeddle income groups resulting in unquantifiable loss in billions of Naira in crop and livestock loss over the past months. The floods in many Nigerian states have lead to power outages which has lingering and potentially hazardous public health impacts on grain and vegetable crops, as well as food manufacturing facilities, food warehouses, and food transporters.

Nigeria which has been battling, with endemic challenges of farmers and cattle-herders clashes that have taken a terrorist dimension of international concern, experiencing flooding at this time, leaves a very bleak future for food security. It is a universal agreement that diminished agricultural production drives up local food costs. Worst still, when the farmers and farming communities are the hardest hit areas, the price shocks force farmers to spend more on food, and less on the recovery of larger assets that could provide more financial security, like livestock or food storage. In every Nigeria communities both urban and rural, the effects of these chains of multiplier and ripple consequences of the massive flooding have began to manifest immensely in the prices of food stuff in the markets. Hunger has set in and criminal activities have tripled. One thing that makes the flooding in Nigeria to look as if it is being under reported by the media is that flood events in Nigeria do not impact everyone equally.

Specifically, crops may be affected in a variety of ways. There have been reported cases of capsizing boats and canoes with resultant loss of lives in many of such communities. Many have abandoned their habitats to IDP camps.