The Menace of Flooding

The rains have increased their intensity and it’s a blessing to have the sky break up and pour back water on the earth from which it evaporated from. But when the water doesn’t sink back into the ground like it should, but it runs freely and rapidly, gathering profusely on the earh’s surface, thereby causing flooding and erosion, it can then be called a ‘menace’. 

Flooding in most parts of the world today has been caused by man-made activities. Although environmental hazards such as tornados and hurricanes also contribute largely to it. Recently, in the Warri Metropolis, both major and minor streets have been seen to be acutely flooded after every downpour that people often have to wade through the flooded streets in dirty and murky waters, often times ankle deep just to get to their destinations. Why is this so? I would think that the answer is obvious! 

Like I mentioned in the last article, which I wrote on June 3, 2019, two days before World Environment Day, June 5, the nonchalant and degrading actions of the inhabitants of the town have led to this demise. When people make the streets and gutters their trash bins, what else does one expect? The drainage canals are filled to the brim with all sorts of debris so much so that when the rain falls down in all of its glory, it has no place to rest it’s head! And so, it flows relentlessly and rapidly without being drained because the gutters are all blocked. I have taken a survey around the Metropolis, and when I’m in a particular area, I consciously check out the gutters-not one is free of debris. Recently, I was in the capital, Asaba, and I still noticed too that the gutters were also littered with dirt but not as bad as the ones in Warri.

The problem of flooding can only be tackled and solved, if the solid waste pollution can be stopped. I still can’t understand why an adult who is supposedly literate, and even drives an SUV, would stoop so low to throw used recharge cards or eaten corn cobs out of his car window and straight into the gutters or on the streets? Or passengers from taxi windows throwing empty sprite or coca-cola bottles out on the main roads? It’s really absurd! 

I think that this problem needs to be addressed and  the public synthesized about the ills of pollution and it’s resultant consequence, flooding. If the Ministry of Environment at all levels in the state and at the national level,  take it upon themselves to educate the public about this demise brought on by their own ignorance, this will go a long way in solving the flooding problem in Nigeria today.