The minister of water resources, Suleiman Adamu, has said that 80 percent of the floods in Nigeria are caused by rainfall, and not Cameroon’s Lagdo dam as widely believed.
During the ministry’s 2023 budget defence in Abuja on Wednesday, October 19, Adamu said that the stories on social media attributing the floods to Cameroon are misleading.
“All these stories I’ve been seeing on social media are misleading,” the minister said.
“The contribution of the Lagdo dam in Cameroon to flooding in this country is only one percent.
“Sometimes they release the water without notice and when they do that, it has impact on communities downstream.
“However, it is not the main reason we have floods in this country. 80 percent of the floods in this country is caused by rainfall.
“The same rainfall that God has blessed us with.
“This year’s flood, I can assure you, we cannot blame it on Cameroon to be sincere.
“We’ll continue to have floods on the river Niger and Benue basins. We signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Cameroonian authorities but since then, every year, it is the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency (NIHSA) that calls them to ask about their level in Lagos dam.
“Even this one when he called them, I was communicating with the director-general (DG) of NIHSA, I said ‘what’s happening in Cameroon?’, and he told me that he haf been trying to reach out to them.
“When he was able to call them, the Cameroonian authorities promised to inform us, but they didn’t notify us until after 24 hours.
“They did the same thing two years ago, I wrote to the minister of foreign affairs and the federal government had to write a protest letter to the Cameroonian authorities about why they did not inform us.
“It was after the rainy season that year that we saw floods in some areas in Adamawa state and we needed to ask the Cameroonian authorities.
“For two weeks, the Cameroonian authorities were denying that they had opened the reservoir.
“Of course, it didn’t go to the confluence, it was limited to some areas in Adamawa state and Taraba state.
“Nigerians should understand that the contribution to the flooding across the nation by Lagdo dam is not so high,” Adamu added.
Meanwhile, the minister noted the federal government will initiate bilateral discussions with Cameroonian authorities in November 2022 on the periodic opening of the dam.
