The Ogun-Oshun River Basin Development Authority is set to write the governors of Lagos and Ogun states on the looming flooding of both states.
The OORBDA annually makes public statements ahead of releasing water from the dams with a view to informing the governments within its coverage area on the need to prepare their people for the consequences of the release.
The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, OORBDA, Mr Olufemi Odumosu, gave the hint in an interview with our correspondent in Abeokuta on Sunday.
According to Odumosu, the agency was planning to write the two governors based on the data it received from the dams’ team with a view to alerting them to the need to prepare for the planned release of water from the dams.
He stated, “I have a draft of the public statement, but we are planning to finalise it.
“I have already called for a draft before I travelled for a two-day programme. We are writing the governors of Lagos and Ogun states on our forecast.
“We got the data of the forecast from our workers at the dams and as we do every year, we will write to the governors.”
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“We are going to release the public statement after the management meets and agrees on the content.”
Meanwhile, the Ogun State Government has said it has put measures in place to curb the looming disastrous flooding in the state.
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The government said it did not want to be caught unawares like in previous years and had put in place preventive measures such as dredging of canals, ordering the relocation of residents around river banks and carrying out enlightenment on how to avoid flooding, among others.
The Special Adviser to the Governor on Environment, Ola Oresanya, disclosed this in a statement on Sunday.
Oresanya said the government had identified the causes of flooding and had begun moves to tackle them.
He said, “The first thing we did in Ogun State was to identify causes of flooding. There are various things that can cause flooding. Some due to nature, some due to activities of man and some due to infrastructural gaps. So, we have identified the causes.
“The one by nature, that means that there must be rain; there must be heavy precipitation, because of the area where we are living. This is a tropical area; so, there is nothing we can do about it.
“We only have to design adaptation measures and the adaptation strategy we designed is to give early warnings to our people, who are living in flood-prone areas, and what to do during flooding that will come.
“Secondly, we identified infrastructural gaps. Most of our drainage channels have not been dredged for many years and we have started dredging them. Since this government came in, we have been dredging most of our canals and we have quite a large number of canals that we have dredged to make sure that even if we have floods, there will be channels for the water to go.”
Oresanya said flooding would occur in September as a large volume of water would be released from dams in the state.
He added that the government had sent a warning signal to those who farm and live along river banks, and lowlands to vacate such places in August.
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