Monday, December 10, 2012

Nigerian agency links flood disaster to climate change

Onyebuchi Ezigbo in AllAfrica.com via This Day (Nigeria): The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has attributed the debilitating flood disaster witnessed in the country this year to climate change.

The agency said the way to mitigate future occurrence of such disaster, was for everybody to become environmentally-conscious. Agency advised governments at all level to build buffer dams where there are need to build some. It equally advised the people in flood plains to move to higher grounds.

The Director General of NEMA, Muhammad Sani-Sidi, disclosed this at the end of the 18th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 18) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Doha, Qatar.

A statement by NEMA's Head of Public Relations, Mr. Yushua Shuaib, quoted Sani-Sidi as saying that climatic condition and drastic change in whether pattern contributed to massive flooding witnessed in many states in Nigeria. The massive flood had resulted in loss of lives and sources of livelihood worth billions of naira.

Sani-Sidi said: "We are now living witnesses to the reality of climate change and global warming where areas considered as dry land in the northern part of the country witnessed excessive and torrential rainfall while some communities in the South were also submerged....

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