After Floods, Comes Famine

The floods which swept through many parts of the country some time ago, submerging homes and hopes with devastating consequences were no isolated events. They had been a long time in coming and in fact they had become a yearly occurrence.

Yet, when they struck with vicious variety, Nigeria as a country was caught unawares and unprepared, as usual. As the country scrambled to put together a befitting response to alleviate the sufferings of families who had seen their livelihoods washed away by storms, many people around the country have been forced to plumb the depths of human misery.

Of course, there were many deaths. For many people, the floods riotously disrupted their lives as they knew it.

Yet, with the floods now having receded in many places, Nigerians most affected by the floods have been gradually and gently putting back what little pieces of their lives have been left behind by the floods. For these people, life must continue where it stopped before the riotous disruption.

However, the most distressing thing about the whole episode is that come next year, the floods may again wreak as much havoc as they have this year, that is if they do not even claim more scalps.

In a country where so little is in place by way of disaster preparation, Nigeria has been particularly obstinate when it  comes to putting in place measures to check the floods that are as sure to come around each year as surely as the sun rises every day.

So little is always in place in spite of the often timeous warnings of experts. Now, farmers have warned that food insecurity will be a grave concern next year as a result of the floods which have severely disrupted farming activities.

It will be a situation of near tragic proportions because as it stands, Nigeria as a country already struggles to feed its teeming population which surged to the 216 million mark this month.

The predicted shortage of food in Nigeria will come as a massive blow to those children who already struggle to get enough food every day.

Nigeria is already a global hunger hotspot. Indeed it has been ever since January 27,2022, when the World  Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization released the Hunger Hotspots Report in which they highlighted soaring food insecurity across 20 countries where conflict, economic shocks, political instability, natural hazards and limited humanitarian access were putting millions of lives at risk.

What was most alarming was not that there was a list at all as hunger has been a major global problem for a long time now, or that lairs of human misery like Yemen, South Sudan and Ethiopia made the list. It was instead that Nigeria featured with the aforementioned trio as four countries where the hunger concern was highest.

As the Giant of Africa, Nigeria should be leading efforts to combat hunger especially in sub-Saharan Africa where it is an especially thorny issue. But if gold rusts as it appears to do, what will iron do?

Kene Obiezu, @kenobiezu