NIHSA’s Director –General, Engr Clement Nze, stated that it was important for the country to construct dams in order to effectively manage the menace of flooding.
Nze stated this at press briefing and three-day orientation/induction training of 100 newly employed staffs of the organisation in Abuja.
He explained that for about 40 years, Nigeria could not build the Dasin-Hausa dam in Adamawa State to cushion the impact of any release of water from Lagdo dam in Cameroon, despite being advised by the neighboring country to construct a dam.
He attributed the delay to lack of political will, funding constraint, among others as some of the factors that hindered the construction of the Dasin-Hausa dam in Nigeria.
Nze, explained that it was important to note that not every flood that occurs in parts of Nigeria like Adamawa State and its environs were as a result of the opening of Lagdo dam.
The NIHSA DG said: “Most of us are advocating that let Nigeria dam the tributaries of major rivers by building small dams instead of large massive dams in order to check flooding. For instance, we have the Kashimbilla dam on River Katsina – Ala, which was primarily built to address the problem of lake Nyos in Cameroon.
“If we can build small dams within the tributaries of River Benue and do proper monitoring to know when to lower the dam and to know when to impound (water), it will go a long way to address any catastrophe coming from River Benue.
“If we can adopt appropriate reservoir management without building this other large dam (Dasin-Hausa dam) it will help to monitor the flow of river Benue to avoid flooding.
The NIHSA boss explained that many rivers in the North had the capacity to flood the region, as he stated that the Lagdo dam had been shut for more than three years and so could not be responsible for flooding in Nigeria during this period.
He said: “But these days globally, the construction of large dams is being discouraged. Dams with heights of about 15 metres and above constitute what we call large dams. So it is being said now that people should build small dams. In India, they have thousands of small dams that can even supply up to one megawatt of electricity.
“So the idea is that you target a community, build a dam there and it controls flooding issues, provides electricity and serves irrigation purposes. For instance, the Zungeru dam is to generate about 700MW, the Gurara phase two is about 300MW. This means you can build small dams like that which can help to control flooding, help in irrigation and support on power generation.”
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