CLAIM: A recent post on Twitter has claimed that the flood situation in Lokoja has nothing to do with climate change.
According to the post, “The situation in Lokoja has nothing to do with Climate change. It’s a failure of foreign policy to Cameroon and the greed that has led governors to eat the ecological funds meant to either build a dam to break the current or an engineering solution to divert the flow.
“The Cameroonian government opens the Lagdo dam in Northern Cameroon, & empties it into the Benue tributaries, and you’ve the situation like it’s today. Farmlands, homes submerged. Petrol tankers coming into Abuja are stuck at Lokoja-Abaji bridge (and there’s fuel scarcity in Abuja).”
The tweep has over 11,000 followers and as at October 31, the post has garnered 2,607 likes, 1,275 retweets, and 68 quote tweets.
The situation in Lokoja has nothing to do with Climate change.
It’s a failure of foreign policy to Cameroon and the greed that has led governors to eat the ecological funds meant to either build a dam to break the current, or an engineering solution to divert the flow.
— Kelvin. (@realkelvin07) October 8, 2022
The linkage between Climate Change and Flood
According to the National Geographic Society, Climate change is the long-term alteration of temperature and typical weather patterns in a place. Climate change could refer to a particular location or the planet as a whole. Climate change may cause weather patterns to be less predictable. These unexpected weather patterns can make it difficult to maintain and grow crops in regions that rely on farming because expected temperature and rainfall levels can no longer be relied on.
Climate change has also been connected with other damaging weather events, such as more frequent and more intense hurricanes, floods, downpours, and winter storms.
A New York Times article explained that flooding, like other disasters, involves a number of competing factors that may affect its frequency and intensity in opposing ways. Climate change, which is worsening extreme rainfall in many storms, is an increasingly important part of the mix.
The piece detailed that “several main ingredients contribute to flood development: precipitation, snowmelt, topography and how wet the soil is. Depending on the type of flood, some factors may matter more than others.
“For example, a river flood, also known as a fluvial flood, occurs when a river, stream or lake overflows with water, often following heavy rainfall or quickly melting snow. A coastal flood occurs when land areas near the coast are inundated by water, often following a severe storm that collides with high tides.
“Flooding can also happen in areas with no nearby bodies of water. Flash floods, in particular, can develop anywhere that experiences intense rainfall over a short period of time.”
The researcher, Elena Shao posited that “when it comes to river floods, climate change is likely exacerbating the frequency and intensity of extreme flood events, but decreasing the number of moderate floods. As the climate warms, higher rates of evaporation cause soils to dry out more rapidly. For those moderate and more commonplace floods, the initial conditions of soil moisture is important, since drier soils may be able to absorb most of the rainfall.”
Also, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) noted that it is increasingly clear that climate change “has detectably influenced” several of the water-related variables that contribute to floods, such as rainfall and snowmelt. In other words, while our warming world may not induce floods directly, it exacerbates many of the factors that do.
Lokoja Flooding
Recently some cities in Nigeria have been affected by severe flooding, including Lokoja-Kogi State in North Central Nigeria. In an article published on ThisDay, Godswill Aguiyi, Program Officer, Alliance for A Green Revolution in Africa noted that there are many related, natural, and manmade factors that contribute to flooding.
Aguiyi said “one major cause of perennial flooding in Nigeria is ‘river and ocean surges’ by tides, pushing water to overflow its boundaries downstream.
“The states around the major rivers like Benue, Kogi, Anambra, Adamawa, and others are the most affected states. The Rivers Niger and Benue overflow their banks into neighbouring communities basically because their depth is silted and shallow and not able to accommodate the volume of water that flows downstream and consequently runs off into the dry lands, causing flooding. Similarly, the ocean also experiences such overflows during heavy rains or winds.”
The Director-General of Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NiMtet), Prof. Mansur Matazu speaking on the current impact of flooding in the country as reported by Punch Newspaper said the flooding was a result of rainfall which might have reached its peak, adding that it could also be the result of the opening of dams and other water-holding facilities.
He said, “You remember, we issued the forecast in February, and we followed up with the monthly updates that we are going to have above-normal rainfall in most parts of the country. So, in terms of the rainfall-induced floods, we have seen the peak but remember we told you that this rainwater gets collected into the reservoirs and dams, and whenever they are filled, it gets overflows.
“Presently, the Lagdo Dam was released alongside other dams, noting that we would be experiencing riverine flooding, which indicated more flooding, especially in the North-Central and the southern states.
“On September 13, the Lagdo dam was released, and other dams were also released. So, what we are witnessing now is riverine flooding. And from the information we are getting, we are going to see more floods. And now the rains are concentrating on the North-Central and the southern states. So, that will be a combination of short-duration, high-intensity rain with riverine flooding. We will see more of these floods in the North-Central states as we have seen in Kogi State and also in southeastern and southwestern states as we are beginning to see in Anambra and some of the parts of South-West.”
VERDICT: While it is true that the opening of the Lagdo dam contributed to riverine flooding in some parts of Nigeria, climate change has exacerbated the effect of the release of the dam. Thus, the claim that Lokoja flooding is not caused by climate change is PARTLY FALSE.
This fact-check was produced by BONews Service with support from Code for Africa’s PesaCheck, International Fact-Checking Network, and African Fact Checking Alliance network.