Sen.Oduah urges intervention fund for flood

Sen. Stella Oduah (PDP Anambra North), on Thursday at plenary called for the provision of an intervention fund to prevent the trend of perennial flood and mitigation of climate change in the country.

Oduah, made the call on Thursday, having cited order 43 of the Senate standing rules, which calls for personal explanation.

Oduah in her submission noted that there had been a horrible experience of flooding by citizens in the South East Geo-Political zone and other parts of the country.

She said: “My zone has had horrible experience and that experience is flood, this flood came to its worst in 2012.”

According to her there is an urgent need to establish an intervention fund for flood prevention and victims relief to mitigate the devastating effect of climate change, rising sea and water level in coastal and flood prone areas of Nigeria .

Oduah said a motion on intervention on flood was brought to the floor of the Senate recently.

She, however, said her current motion was hinged on the need to prevent flood in Nigeria.

“In 2012 there was a study conducted by United Nations (UN), the study clearly stated that there is need to have preventive measures, in regard to this, the United UN invested 1.4 million dollars for the study and came out with several measures, if put in place will stop the flood to a reasonable measure,” Oduah said.

She said her motion was aimed at addressing the need to have preventive measures, noting that the preventive measures requires intervention fund.

She said the provision of the intervention fund would help take care of the victims and prevent the flood itself.

“This motion has a bill that is very encompassing and so the detail, I intend to submit,” Oduah said.

President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan his remark on the motion, thanked Oduah for presenting the motion.

Lawan said the motion which was not open to debate was design to inform the authority.

“Let me at this point say that, I agree with you that we need to have resources to not only try to prevent but to undertake studies because, we even need to have scientific supported approaches rather than just reacting in fire brigade approaches .

“We should identify those flood prone areas and, while they get flooded and how we can mitigate the flooding and that requires some fund.

“I believe, this is a worthwhile venture and it is something that government should do to ensure that this perennial flooding is minimised or controlled completely,” Lawan said.