FOLLOWING a marathon meeting between President Goodluck Jonathan and other government officials from Thursday into the early hours of Friday, the administration announced that plans have been finalized for the federal government to provide special assistance to the victims of the recent major flooding in many parts of the country.
“What was decided was that every governor should go back and put in more efforts. We are already putting in some efforts but we are going to put in some more efforts,” said Governor Uduaghan of Delta State, at the end conclusion of the meeting.
“The Federal Government will continue to also ensure that relief materials get down to the states, he added, saying that the federal government is making efforts to go beyond the provision of relief materials, the details of which will be released on Friday.
The governor said that they were more concerned about the short-time intervention to address the urgent needs of the displaced victims
“For today, what we considered were how do we resettle those that were displaced by this flood that have ravaged a lot of states in Nigeria.
“The medium and long-term plans will come back later.
“The scenerio is such that you have an emergency situation where people who have been living in a place for years are displaced.
“So, the first thing is to relocate them to places where you can give them shelter, food and basic social needs,” he said.
Environment Minister Hadiza Mailafia, who was present at the event also in her capacity as the chair of the presidential committee on flood disaster, said the situation was a national disaster with traumatizing experiences that called for concern.
She said from the committee’s assessments, the states in the southern parts of the country were now experiencing high turn of the flooding.
Mailafia said the committee also found out that in some cases it was practically impossible to do nothing but evacuate the victims.
She said as part of long terms measures, government would have to consider buffer dams on the long stretch of the Niger, to intermittently break wild tides on the river to avoid further occurrence.