JOMBOLINKS: September 2012

Erosion and flood dares Nigeria By Okechukwu Jombo For the up tempt time stories of the menace of all manners of erosion and flood, has continued to prevail in Nigeria with lives and properties lost at will even at times displacing families and relocating farmlands. Roads, markets and schools threatened, among others in most communities of the country. While the north is under the hammer of flood, the South east has continued to be terrorized by erosion.Just two days ago 26 communities in Anambra were cut off from civilization with the State Governor shouting for intervention from the federal government. In the Northern states such as Benue ,Adamawa ,Jigawa ,Niger ,Taraba,Plateau and many others have all lost substantial number of lives and property even with more warning from NEMA that more flood is on the way. Most times both the state and federal government are incapacitated by lack of funds to help the communities to fight the scourge leading to communities taking there fate into their own hand by resorting to self help. Each state has its own share of the scourge which is even more severe as the rain continues to hammer the region. The people of Nanka a rural community in Anambra state in concert with their State government and the World Bank, have risen in unity to confront gully erosion in the community, determined that no families would be submerged or wiped out in future by gully erosion. This is one of the aims of the Nanka 2012 convention planned for October this year. Officially, there are 18 erosion sites in Nanka which is the same story across the south east Even though many reputable personalities like former Central Bank Governor Dr Chukwuma Soludo and Former Nafdac Director general and former minister of information Dora Akunyeli and others all hail from that area help still couldn’t come from the federal government Other communities like , Amaokala, Aguly Nnobi, Njaba are not spared of the scourge too. A recent example is when the Anambra state commissioner for Environment, Dr. Ifedi Okwenna said that he has submitted a list of 62 erosion sites to Abuja that will cost Anambra state government more than N17bn. He went ahead to state that the 62 sites are “the critical ones”. Other non-critical include “550 very active erosion sites and 1, 000 erosion sites”. According to Okwenna “Last year, we did not receive any grant for ecological problem, what we did was that we used our internally generated revenue and part of the federation account to try to solve the problem Even at that the problem of erosion menace has not been solved in Anambra state and will not be solved but controlled and managed to the extent that erosion sites will no longer force people to abandon their homes and farm lands. Worthy of mention here for all genuinely concerned with the menace of erosion in South Eastern Nigeria in that the threat posed by the “non-critical” 550 very active and 1,000 erosion site identified by the commissioner far exceeds the present 62 critical sites that attention is being focused on. In the next fifteen to twenty years, these so called “non-critical” sites will develop into erosion monsters affecting human settlement, agricultural lands, thereby seriously hampering economic and social aspects of human existence in South Eastern Nigeria. There is a long history of erosion in the southeast part of Nigeria. In early May 2009, the Senate Ad Hoc Committee on Investigation of Transport Sector said, after a visit to the southeast, that the state of roads in the region was "the worst in the country". That description confirmed what most people already knew. Chairperson of the committee, Heniken Lopobiri, said at the time that the "deplorable condition of erosion" in the southeast zone meant that previous federal governments did not regard road rehabilitation and reconstruction as priority projects in the southeast. He identified gully erosion and years of federal neglect as the main reasons for the poor state of roads in the southeast. In his capacity as chairperson of the southeast governors' forum, Governor Peter Obi of Anambra State advanced reasons why soil erosion should be deemed a priority problem that deserves urgent attention by state and federal governments. Obi argued that the scope and destructive nature of soil erosion in the southeast zone underlined the need for the federal government to accord it the same level of priority as other problems in various parts of the country, such as deforestation and desertification, which the federal government is tackling in the north. Obi told journalists at the end of the meeting of the governors: "The entire South-East zone has been steadily and remorselessly ulcerated by landslides and gully erosion. This has created a problem so monumental that it is far beyond the initiatives and financial capabilities of the South-East zone to address. Whole communities have been buried in deep gullies, farmlands wiped out and roads truncated." He added: "It is a matter of deep regret that, over the years, successive Federal administrations looked the other way while the natural disaster of erosions wrought incalculable havoc on our section of the country. The same cannot be said of the northern parts of the country where concerted federal efforts are ranged against desert encroachment. Nor can it be said of the South-West where federal authorities are pitted in a continuing battle against the ravages of the Bar Beach in Lagos." Four years ago, it looked like help was near.When in October 2008 to be précis news filtered in that the southeast geopolitical zone of the country would receive more federal attention when it is declared a “disaster zone”. The news emerged following a meeting between the then Vice President Goodluck Jonathan and the governors of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo states. Like most promises made by the federal government, there was a catch attached to the pledge. A committee would be set up to map the details of the funds required for the program, as well as the different ways the government could intervene. Assembling a committee has become the most effective way the federal government annihilates projects it doesn’t want to take off. Investigation reveal that the natural causes of the scourge include the type of the landscape like hilly, sloppy and sandy areas the nature of the soil, the nature of the rocks and the nature of surface and ground water. We also discovered that human elements also cause erosion, especially demographic factors such as human population, and factors such as deforestation and urbanization, industrial technological development, poor agricultural practices such as bush burning and the rush for modernization among local communities. People have asked to know why have we failed to effectively control this erosion menace that has been observed since the early 40s? Why have successive governments at all levels failed to give the issue the attention it deserves? The reasons for this is not far farfetched as one can see that its an endemic disease the whole country has been caught up with. The sickness of waiting until infrastructures dilapidates beyond manageable level and we then start seeking intervention, quoting huge contract sums and playing the blame game. The same old vicious circle has been played out over and over again in South Eastern Nigeria – waiting for grant from the ecological fund from the federal government. The commissioner is eagerly awaiting the passage of a bill that would see the emergence of a new agency to manage ecological funds by the National Assembly. He is hoping that the agency would now come out with criteria that would determine which state gets ecological fund. Nonsense. Every state is waiting for that easy money from the federal government under whatever guise or classification. Funds that end up not been accounted for.

JOMBOLINKS

Friday, September 21, 2012

ORGANO GOLD RECENT VACANCIES, September 27 2012

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Erosion and flood dares Nigeria