Flood And Failure of Governance, By Y. Z Ya’u

There is something claustrophobic about Kano. It is not just the feel of concrete all over you that seems to suffocate you. It not just the population that makes each of us to be bumping and stepping on each other. And it is not just the dirt that threatens to take over houses and it is not even just the pollution in the air that is choking people in the streets. It is the combination of all these and even more.

These extras for me, it seems when I am in Kano, it is just work and too much work all the time. And to make matters worse, you are perpetually glued to your screen (either of the laptop or the handset) all the time. You are in perpetual communication with friends who are thousands of kilometers away from you, oblivious of those in close proximity to you.

Across the cyber link, you send them Jokes and they laugh and you laugh, but you colleagues and neighbours seem unable to understand what you are up to. You don’t laugh with them. They don’t laugh with you. Each has his or her preoccupation, fighting it over on screens.

It is in these moments that you realize that you need a real community, people with faces, not just names and memes, people whose height you know, whose smiles you can recognize from a distance, whose face tells you what they ate in the morning and whose laughter tells you more stories than all the emojis in your computer.

Such communities have their own problems, not just complaints about the slowness of their network or the inability to connect at all. On Saturday, I decided to visit a couple of such communities and see and hear how they are coping with the flood. In undertaking the journey, I found myself being refreshed, even as I know what I was going to see could not be a pleasant story.

The journey to Itas from Jamaare was smooth, at least Nigerian roads standards. We had spent an hour or at Doganjeji to commiserate with cousins whose mother had died the previous day. Our tentative plan was from Itas to go to Atafowa, still in the same local government and from there, cross over to Ruba in Kafin Hausa Local Government of Jigawa state. Neither my colleague Jamilu who was doing the driving nor I had ever been beyond Itas so we did not really know the area but we had planned to meet Sanusi Abubakar of the Federal College of Education, Jamaare at Itas. Sanusi who is experimenting rice farming in the Gadau-Gulmo farming complex was battling to harvest his rice out of the flooded farm, had reason to be there.

A veteran of many election campaigns, Sunusi had in the past crisscrossed the area in search of votes for his political friend who had contested elections for the Jamaare/itas Federal Constituency, winning at least on two occasions, losing in the last elections.

Crisscrossing this vast local government is not an easy thing. With a landmass of 1,622 Km2, it is the largest local government in Bauchi State and one of the largest in the country. It shares borders with Buji, Kiyawa, Kafin Hausa and Birniwa on the Jigawa State side, Jamaare, Katagum, Zaki, Gamawa on Bauchi State side.

With the Jamaare-Katagum river dividing it into two halves along its breadth, running across its length, and a number of offshoots tributaries to this river, the area appears like an internal delta. Not surprising, much of it is flooded yearly during the rainy season.
We met Sunusi at Alaramma Maize Processing Factory (Gidan Gari), just by the entrance to Itas from Jamaare. Alaramma Maize Processing Factory is a local factory producing maize flour established by an indigenous entrepreneur, named Alhaji Alaramma.

Sunusi obviously had discussion with some people who knew the area better and had advised him that our vehicle was not suitable for the trip and that we needed to ride motorcycles from there to Atafowa and that there was no way we could get to Ruba with motorcycles because we needed to cross three rivers that were full to the banks.

Once Ruba was out of our reach, we decided to seek for alternative an alternative place to visit. They suggested to go to Gulmo and possibly reach Gadau, to join the Azare-Katagum Road. So, after a long debate, we came to a solution. We could first go to Atafowa on the bikes and when we return, take our vehicle and drive to Gulmo and Gadau since, on this side, although the forest was flooded, the newly constructed (but not completed) road had not been overtaken by the flood. We parked our vehicle inside the house of Alaramma.

We procured the bike riders and set for the trip. Soon after Diga village which is a little over one kilometer from Itas, we left the Atafowa road and rode on a path seems to like a shortcut, although the main reason was to avoid the water. The main road was not only flooded and was also impassible. Atafowa seems to be largest town in Itas-Gadau local government, certainly bigger than Gadau (including its Sadau Zungur University) and Itas, the Local Government headquarters, but of the four major communities in the local government, it is the least developed in terms of infrastructure.

By the time we arrived, Atafowa was encircled by flood water and negotiating entering into the town was not easy. We had to try a number of points, abandoning them, before we finally got to sequence in. Two major emergency “lakes’ had formed at both the northern and southern peripheries of the town through which water gets into the town, flooding many streets and houses. A large number of buildings have been brought down by the rain, rendering many people homeless. Outside the town, their farms have been submerged and crops such as millet, groundnuts and sesame have been irretrievably lost.

The irony was that lost had occurred at the moments when the farmers were in jubilant mood, seeing the luxuriant crops, promising bumper harvests, given the near perfect adequate rainfall, that was, until the rains came pouring mercilessly on them.

We took a peep of the Ruba Road from Atafowa (the gateway to Jigawa state). It was lost inside the endless kilometers of flood lake. There, you could not see any patch of land. We thanked our stars for heeding the advice of the people who suggested we should abandon our intention of going to Ruba. The reason for going to Ruba was of course to see that section of flooded land and all we could see and image was volume of slushing water, trashing endlessly, all the way.

We had seen enough! Going back to Itas was uneventful, except for the struggle by the rider not to get stack in the mud as we rode wadded through ponds of water much of the way. Midway, it appeared it was going to rain and we became a little apprehensive, not because we were worried about the rain beating us but because if it had rained, it would have been difficult to navigate our way back.

By the time we were returning back to Itas, it was threatening to rain but luckily for us, it did not and arrived to safety and comfort of our vehicle. We were about to remove the vehicle from where we parked it in Alaramma’s House, when he came. Since we had seen for more than a year, we had time to catch up, especially about his farming business
Alaramma is a major farmer in Itas, and in northern Bauchi State. This year, his rice harvest alone was more than 6000 bags.

He had large farms In the Gadau-Gulmo farming complex, running to hundreds of hectares, it was part of his farm that Sunusi had used for his rice, which he was harvesting. In addition to rice, Alaramma also farms maize (for which he has three processing plants in different locations), millet, beans and now sesame.

He offered to join us for the trip to Gulmo and Gadau. This new road, we were going to take, has some emotional appeal to me, I had been told or rather gathered, that have many relatives in the villages along the road. I had never visited the village but I thought I was passing home. Of all the ten villages by the road, Gulmo was situated more or less on an island, which saved it from flood. Unlike Baragwam and Mazai both of which were by a long depression which drains both river and rain water for kilometers. However, the advantage Gulmo has is also its disadvantage. When it rains the water formed pools in the middle of the village and with no proper drainage, the pools blocked most of the major streets of the village.

There are about 500 houses in the village. A prosperous farming community, with lively cultural and active evening life, and welcoming to strangers, it is a fast-expanding settlement. Land is readily available and anyone wanting a piece of land to farm, is welcomed. This has made the village to attract many new settlers from far and near. Its population might well be over 30,000 now.

We went through virtually all the major streets, avoiding the sections where water pools had blocked. No house has been spared the havoc of the rain. In many houses, all rooms have collapsed while in others, parts of the houses have collapsed. It is a real disaster.
The public primary school is a ruin, could probably be the dent of dangerous reptiles.

The local primary healthcare was the only building unaffected by the aftermost of the downpour. Other than the primary school and the primary healthcare, there is no other government presence in the place. But because it is a rich farming community, some entrepreneurs have set up a solar electricity supply in the village, which residents could tap and pay for usage. There are also two or so big farmers who have their own private solar solutions.

About four days ago, the Bauchi State Governor accompanied the Minister of Works to inspect the damage done by the flood in some parts of Northern Bauchi State, notably the Buskori section of the Maiguduri-Kano Highway, the Sabon Gari section of the same highway, between Azare and Jamaare, where all the houses have been washed off completely, (with resident now living as IDPs in uncompleted buildings of the federal Housing Project ) where the road was completely washed off and passage blocked, Shira where many people suffered the consequences of the flood as well as part of Misau LGA.

Places like Gulmo that are not in the public view do not have the voice and leverage of attracting the governor to commiserate with them and offer them assistance. As far as both the media and government are concerned, they could not have been victims of flood even if all their settlements were obliterated, because they are voiceless and invisible. They must therefore carry their cross by themselves.

We left Gulmo and proceeded to Gadau. The road was uncompleted but all the three bridges have been installed. It is commendable that the Bauchi State government found it worthy to construct this 24.5KM road, that will help to evacuate commodities from this rich farming enclave. It was however, obvious that the quality of work is poor: the first bridge from Gulmo has already cracked on the surface and barriers have been placed to prevent vehicles from driving on it.

The bridge is just about 500 meters from Gulmo and from the take in of the bridge down to about less than one kilometer to Gadau, which is about 18KM, the whole of the forest is flooded. This flood, again was not from the river since the river flooding this year is minimal due to low rainfall in the Jos Plateau from where the Jamaare-Katagum River took off.

Although we did not enter the other villages such as Mazai, Baragwam and Damatsa, they too had experienced both the flood and the downpour that have destroyed many houses and farms. All farmers are dependent on farms for their livelihood, but they seemed more worried about the buildings they lost than the farms. This is because while effect of the destruction of farms by the flood would take some weeks to impact on the livelihood of the people, collapsed of the houses is an immediate challenge; where to sleep. Where to rest, where to have privacy? Villages generally do not have surplus rooms, most rooms are densely occupied even without calamity that had occurred, with so many rooms destroyed the congestion resulting from shortage of rooms the communities are a major health challenge. Privacy issues are considered as luxury.

What I have learnt from this trip? It is that rural people are highly resilient, they have already put this behind them and life has picked up. They go to their farms (yes, those that have not been destroyed), they go to market, and life goes on. I saw many children who have no opportunity to go school. They are part of the statistics we kept citing about the number of children who are out of school.

It is not their choice nor that of their parents, they have no schools to attend, where there are schools, there are no classrooms and no teachers. In such situation, farmer-parents will rather have their children to be with them in the farms than to send down to the empty threating rooms, that are occupied by too many reptiles like snakes, doing nothing from morning to midday.

Here in this rural communities, there is also local (indigenous) knowledge that is not being tapped. In all the villages, land use was well planned even when we do not we know who did the planning. There were lands for farming, there were the grazing fields for domestic animals and there are grazing tracks for cattle, within the villages, there were spaces for leisure, for sports, etc. Sadly, these well planned rural eco systems are being destroyed as many greedy urban people, descended into the villages, grabbing lands from the poor people.

All the grazing fields have been converted into farms, many of the grazing tracks have been slowed by farms today, these villagers have nowhere to graze their domestic animals. Keeping the animals 24 hours at home makes the environment dirty and with no healthcare facilities, villagers become prone to diseases, in spite of their high health resilience.

Should rain be synonymous with flood? So, it seems, if not for all Nigerian communities at least for people of Itas/Gasdau LGA. But should this be so? Certainly, no but it fits the equation in the dynamics that rains will result in flood where governance is irresponsible.