By; MOHAMMED KAWU, Bauchi
Heavy rainfall on Thursday night, busted out the locally constructed earth dam in Cheledi Village of Kirfi Local Government Area in Bauchi State, causing undue flooding, leading to washing-away of some parts of the Bauchi-Gombe Highway.
The downpour which started Thursday night lasted up to the early hours of Friday, ravaging farmlands and pulled down houses in Cheledi Village and surrounding hamlets in the affected areas.
Disclosing the incident to journalists on Friday, Secretary to the Bauchi State Government, Barrister Ibrahim Mohammed Kassim said, “We are aware of the unfortunate event that happened day before yesterday, moving into yesterday night, again there was a reoccurrence of floods in Kirfi LGA”.
“In fact, some of the reports we got earlier this morning is that the road to Gombe has been cut-off as of now around Balare, the two culverts have been washed away by floods water”, the Bauchi SSG said.
Kassim explained that Kirfi community leaders were in Bauchi to discuss with state government officials to ensure that the happening is made of the past, saying “We discussed on our own side and also discussed with the stakeholders and all of us are on the same page of what need to be done”.
Also speaking, the Director General of Bauchi State Environmental Protection Agency (BASEPA), Dr. Kabir Ibrahim said however that no single life was lost in the flooding which lasted for several hours ravaging the Cheledi community.
Kabir who attributed the major cause of flooding particularly during rainy seasons to climate change, expressed government’s sympathy to the people of Kirfi Local Government Area for the happening, recalling that similar thing happened in Cheledi village of Kirfi LGA in 2021.
“It was within the last three months that we were able to realized that there was a dam locally constructed by the people and most of the corridors that allow for the flow of water to the communities were initiated from that dam”.
He revealed that after accessing the situation, the state government came up with a road map to excavate and desilt the local dam to create a reservoir that can contain water coming down from the highway adjacent to the area.
“Finally, we selected Triacta Construction Coy which is one of the global company we had doing one or things in Bauchi which while trying to mobilize the company to the project site, the flood again happened in Cheledi, but a near miss incident where everyone has survived in that regard”.
“Now, we were able to resolve, collaborated with two companies, KK Kingdom, Habib Engineering and Shafa Coy where they have similar equipment with Triacta and the three companies would be on site today to commence work”.
The BASEPA Director General recalled that the World Bank has last year came up with managing and solving disaster issues across three sectors of Agriculture, Environment and Water Resources in the 19 Northern states including Bauchi which intervention was billed to N30 billion, but which has not yet started.
“World Bank has come up with a project and it has not yet started, but fortunately for Bauchi we are among the beneficiaries and it is across three sectors, agriculture, environment and water resources, and I’m the project coordinator for Bauchi state”.
Dr. Kabir Ibrahim said that the state is currently at the stage waiting for disbursement of the funds for some of the projects and Kirfi project is one of them, however attributed delay in the release of the funds to the bank’s multiple procedures, hence the emergency response to the Kirfi problem by the state government.
He explained that projects of World Bank’s intervention require rigorous engineering designs and the process has to pass through about five teams that has to take about seven months for approval to have execution, saying the lasting solution to the Kirfi floods problem will be the construction by the state government of a bigger dam for the community.
According to him, having a standard dam for the Kirfi community would convert the likely misfortune to opportunity with adequate retainable water throughout the season that could boost irrigation activities in the local government area, adding “Similar issue avails in Gwaram, Misau LGA with similar recommendation to Kirfi”.
