.Nearly One Million in Over 300 communities Internally Displaced, Deaths Reported – Gov Diri
•Floating Corpses Seen in Cemetery
By Progress Godfrey
With the devastating effects of the ongoing flood ravaging several states in Nigeria, residents of Bayelsa State have cried out over the isolation of the state from the rest of the country among other crippling conditions currently affecting the state.
Bayelsa, one of the oil-rich states in the southern part of Nigeria, located in the core of the Niger Delta region, shares boundaries with the waters of the Atlantic Ocean dominating its Southern borders, making many communities almost (and in some cases) surrounded by water, which by implication makes them inaccessible by road.
Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency, (NIHSA), in its ‘Overview of 2022 Annual Flood Outlook (AFO): Update on Flood Situations in the Country’, listed Bayelsa State as one of the “highly probable flood risk states”. The report stated, “The general outlook shows that: 233 Local Government Areas (LGAS) in 32 States of the Federation and the FCT fall within the Highly Probable Flood Risk Areas; 212 LGAs in 35 States of the Federation including the FCT fall within the Moderately Probable Flood Risk Areas, while the remaining 329 LGAs fall within the Probable Flood Risk Areas.
“The Highly Probable Flood Risk States as predicted are Adamawa, Abia, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Bauchi, Bayelsa, Benue, Cross-River, Delta, Ebonyi, Ekiti, Edo, Gombe, Imo, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Kebbi, Kogi, Kwara, Lagos, Nasarawa, Niger, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, Oyo, Rivers, Sokoto, Taraba, Yobe, Zamfara and the FCT.”
Bayelsa residents have taken to social media to tell the world about the suffering and humanitarian challenges the flood has put them in. A resident, @enibo_albert in the ‘bird app’ tweeted: “The #FloodInBayelsa is becoming unbearable for residents.
We need our voices to be heard! Bayelsa is cut off from the rest of the country, and East-West Road is blocked. Nothing is coming into the state. Petrol is now over N500 per litre.”
Another user with the handle @BrayelaLayefa tweeted: “We are gradually being isolated from ourselves, local government by local government, communities by communities, even inside Bayelsa we can’t access some communities as a result of the flood disaster. Now even the airport has been separated from Amassoma community.”
Reports also emerged that corpses were seen floating in a cemetery in Azikoro area in Yenagoa, the capital city of the state. A resident who spoke to The Explainer correspondent on condition of anonymity confirmed the report, saying that the suffering in the state has heightened since the flood.
In a statement earlier, Governor Diri of Bayelsa, while applauding Nigeria’s President, Mohammadu Buhari for the interventions so far, noted that the scale of the devastation is beyond what the state can handle alone.
He said: “I wish to thank Mr President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Muhammadu Buhari, for his kind directive to the different federal agencies to come to assist the state.
I urge them to comply with the presidential directive expeditiously.
“Without exaggeration, the sheer scale of the devastation is not such that the state can handle on its own. We urgently solicit the support of multinationals, international donor agencies, the Red Cross, Diplomatic Missions and people of goodwill to come to the aid of our state.
“I appeal to Mr President to consider special grants to the state from the Stabilisation Fund, Ecological Fund and the Natural Resources Fund. From my personal assessment, the situation is dire. Nearly a million people in over 300 communities have been internally displaced. Unfortunately, deaths have been reported,” the statement read. The Explainer observes that several states across the federation have experienced flooding in recent weeks with severe human and material costs.
