A South Africa-based company, AquaMatters (Pty) Limited, her partners, Sensatec of Germany, and TCarta Marine LLC of the United States of America, USA, have commended President Muhammadu Buhari on his directive to the Minister of Water Resources, Engineer Suleiman Adamu, to develop a plan towards the control of flooding situation in the country.
AquaMatters and its partners have over 30 years technical experience in flooding control and dams construction.
In a press release issued at the weekend and signed by Engr. Tomás Person, the Chief Executive Officer, CEO, of AquaMatters and Mr. Corey Goodrich, Chief Executive Officer, CEO, of TCarta, the companies commended President Buhari for his good initiative aiming at preventing future loss of lives and properties through flooding.
Recall that President Buhari has directed the Minister of Water Resources, Engr. Adamu, to within 90 days, develop a comprehensive plan of action for the prevention of flood disaster in Nigeria.
The President’s directive urged the minister to collaborate with the Ministries of Environment and Transportation as well as state governments to develop a lasting and sustainable action-plan towards curtailing flood in the country.
AquaMatters and its partners described the President’s directive as a welcome development and a departure from previous emergency plan.
They said that the first culprit of flooding is always the big word ‘Climate Change,’ which is basically the changing weather patterns associated with global warming.
Speaking on behalf of the group, Goodrich said, “It is obvious that the climatic conditions are changing; however, there are many related, natural, and man made factors that contribute to flooding. To forestall further threats to food security, the companies are willing to work with the Ministry of Water Resources to find a lasting solution to flooding in Nigeria.
“Without doubt government must begin to act pro-actively by utilising geographical information systems and metrological data to improve their early warning systems and reduce people’s exposure to flood risk, this is area of specialisation of our company.”
He further said that TCarta has the capacity to provide geospatial data products and software solutions for geospatial applications from engineering monitoring to hydrographic charting and geospatial intelligence.
He added, “The Nigerian government must begin to consider the construction of a buffer dam to accommodate excess water from the Lagdo Dam in Cameroon. This is very critical, given that aside from dam absorbing excess water, a buffer dam will provide irrigation for thousands of hectares of land, stimulate fishing, and most likely support the generation of electricity.
“The government must also invest in the dredging of the major rivers to accommodate high volume of water, promote inland waterways, as well as capture fishing.
“Finally, the government must build, reactivate, and maintain the urban drainage systems, and prevent people from erecting structures on waterways.”
Goodrich further added that Tcarta has a leveraging long history of providing bathymetric data and seafloor mapping for marine applications, they offer inland, coastal and offshore hydrospatial and geospatial mapping systems and solutions for geospatial remote sensing intelligence, coastal engineering, environmental and coastal monitoring, and global mapping applications.
He continued, “The company has worked in the coastal waters throughout the globe and with large scale surveying initiatives in the Pacific, Caribbean and Indian Oceans, and specific focus on remote island nations and challenging environments in the Middle East and Arctic regions.”
The release further stressed the importance of dams, adding that Nigeria need more dams, adding that with adequate dams, flood which is seen as a disaster would be of great economic importance to the country, if properly managed and channeled to the agricultural sector and hydropower plants creation.
