Federal Lawmaker Warns Of Impending Food Crisis, Accuses FG Of Complacency

A federal Lawmaker elected under the platform of the social Democratic Party, SDP in National Assembly, representing Demsa, Lamurde and Numan state constituencies in Adamawa state Hon. Kwamoti Laori, berated the Federal Government, over its continued failure to curtail the perennial flood disaster caused by the release of excess flood waters from Lagdo Dam, located in neighbouring Cameroun.

Kwamoti who disclosed this while speaking to newsmen in Yola, over the weekend after distributing relief items worth over N2. 5 million, noted that the government shortcoming in fashioning a proactive response to the perennial flooding caused by the release of excess water from Lagdo dam by Nigeria's neighbour in Cameroun, can create a food crisis for the country.

He stressed that after the country's leaders failed to secure any benefit from the damming of the Benue River in Lagdo, in neighbouring Camerounian, the country ought to have taken proactive measures to mitigate the impact of the flood waters released from the dam, but which he said the government has failed to do.

According to him, even the relief agencies saddled with providing succour to the victims of the flood disaster, has also been mired in unnecessary bureaucracy.

He said his concern is that the government inaction in either dredging the Benue River, so that it can be deep enough to contain the flood waters released from the dam or the construction of embarkment along the water course has perennially resulted in destruction of farmlands lying along the Benue trough thus exposing them to a food crisis.

" There's going to be food crisis with this perennial flooding of communities lying along the Benue trough and that is why government has to be serious," Laori said.

The federal lawmaker who said the flood waters released from the Lagdo dam has caused untold hardship for his constituent in Lamurde, Demsa and Numan, with over 50 communities submerged constituency, said the FG is to be blamed because of its slow response.

He maintained that despite the perennial floods being man made the FG was yet to pay any serious attention to curtail the disaster.

He regretted that over 50 communities in Adamawa alone had been affected by the floods with all their unharvested farm produce completely destroyed.

"These lapses, which is now subjecting all those living along the Benue trough, being the ones at the receiving end and at the risk of a potential food crisis, is the fault of our government.

This lapses is caused by failure of the FG, to ensure that Nigerians profited from the construction of Lagdo dam by the Cameroonian government.

The Nigerian government ought to have extracted a concrete commitment from the Cameroonian government which would have seen the country benefit from power evacuation including their cooperation to help erect a buffer dam to curtail the release of excess flood waters from the dam. But our government never did that, and even the assistance to those affected in the flood disaster is yet to get to the victims because of unnecessary bureaucracy" he said.