Th e lawmaker representing Benue North-east Senatorial District, Chief Barnabas Gemade, has said he was putting a high powered motion to the National Assembly to “advise, and if possible compel the Federal Ministry of Water Resources to begin a national programme of captive dams to address the issue of fl ooding in the country.
” Gemade said this in an interview with newsmen at the weekend in Makurdi after donating relief materials to the Benue fl ood victims. He wondered why “Nigeria has continued to sit and watch the issue of fl ooding year in, year out without taking any decisive action to stop it.” He lamented that “the Nigeria Meteorological Agency NIMET has always given signals as to when the flooding will occur every year, but nothing has been done,” adding that “this time I will pioneer the issue at the National Assembly and must get the infrastructure accomplished to stop the flooding.” “I am a practical engineer as well as a politician and I am aware of all the diffi culties and all the problems of national infrastructure.
“Flooding is one of the perennial problems of this nation and there are many things that can be done, to alleviate the problems of the people. “Nigeria has left a lot of things for granted. Today we have only six or seven major dams in Nigeria, no captive dam anywhere in the rural areas to serve as reservoir to collect water,” he said. He explained that captive dams were not major dams, “and can take between 20 and 50, 000 cubic metres of water, as heavy rains come, each of them will collect their own beat and by other means or irrigation pass down to tributaries, rivers fl owing gradually to end fl ooding.”
