By Vincent Ujumadu

Awka—FOLLOWING predictions that many states in the country, including Anambra, would be affected by flood disaster this rainy season, the Anambra State Emergency Management Agency, SEMA says it has taken necessary proactive measures to minimize the envisaged adverse effects. The executive secretary of SEMA, Chief Paul Odenigbo had already begun a sensitization tour of 10 flood-prone local government areas of the state to prepare the minds of the people on the impending disaster.

The concerned local government areas are Ayamelum, Anambra East, Anambra West, Ogbaru, Onitsha North, Onitsha South, Idemili South, Awka North, as well as Ekwusigo and Ihiala. He said that the state government had procured enough speed boats and other basic logistical needs of potential victims of the flood disaster in the Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, camps already set up.

Odenigbo said, weekend, that the State Executive Council, EXCO, has directed SEMA to commence what he called ‘early warning interactive sensitization meetings with stakeholders in the flood-prone areas of the state ahead of the announcement by the Cameroonian government that it would release excess water from Ladgo Dam into River Benue in Nigeria.

According to him, SEMA had prepared itself for any eventuality, even as he stated that the expected flood disaster this year would not be as devastating as the 2012 incident which took most Nigerians unawares.

Odenigbo said the early prediction by the Nigerian Meteorological Institute, NIMET, about heavy rainfall and another flood disaster in 2015, in addition to the announcement by Cameroon, gave Nigerian authorities and citizens ample time to prepare to mitigate the adverse effects of the predicted deluge.

He also called on local government authorities, the clergy and town union executives to assist his agency and take the message of the impending flood disaster to the grassroots in order to save lives.