Follow Us on Google
From Paul Osuyi, Asaba
The governorship candidate of the Young Progressive Party (YPP) in Delta State, Sunny Ofehe has criticized politicians for taking undue advantage of the flood situation to visit Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps to donate relief materials for flood victims.
Ofehe, an environmental activist, said by storming IDP camps, politicians were simply ignoring the real issues that led to the flooding which he insisted, was avoidable.
Addressing journalists in Asaba, Ofehe blamed the nation’s leadership for the disaster, lamenting however that the poor citizens were now being made to suffer the consequences of leadership failure.
“Some have blame the flood on climate change. Well in as much as climate change could be a big factor, the question is how did we get here?
“The water did not just take over the whole communities without giving signs and information. And how many times have you seen dredgers coming to dredge our water ways?
“How many times have we dredged River Ethiope? Even this River Niger, twice I have flown Asaba Airport, I took time to look at it, you can see that some places are already without water which is dangerous because when the water don’t have where to pass to, they begin to build momentum which is seen as a tsunami. When you don’t respond early and it starts to flow, it takes everything along. That is what we are experiencing now.
“And what is shocking for me is that our politicians are not talking about the issue today, I see all of them running to IDP camp to score political points, whereas they are the ones that kept us here, and are now showing that they care more for the people by going to give relief materials,” he said.
Ofehe wondered what the government was doing with ecological funds which reflect in both federal and state budget annually.
“Dont they get ecological funds? Every year there is ecological funds in both federal and state budget. On top of that you can take your problem to the international community if only you can show that what you are doing ecologically is not sufficient enough to deal with the disaster.
“If elected governor, I am already talking with the Rotterdam Municipality on how we can deal with flooding, I didn’t know we are going to encounter this one, I was only using Asaba as a case study,” Ofehe added.
He described the flood disaster as a sad “realisation of how our leadership system has become. We should ask governorship candidates how we got here but rather we are celebrating them for going to IDP camps to donate relief materials.
“We have failed as a government. We owe it to the people to say we have done wrong. What is our marshal plan right now? What is the short term and long term solutions to the problem?
“We are waiting for the water to recede and go back to the ocean, and until that happens we are not going to do anything. If nothing is done, the next flooding will sweep away multitudes and the big men who have stolen our money will not be affected.”
