The management of the two major dams in Niger State, Jebba and Kainji, has advised host communities to move to upper land as the rains causing flooding increase.
Nigerian Metrological Department in 12 states, including Niger, had predicted heavy rains this year, which would cause loss of lives and destruction of properties by flooding.
Mainstream Energy Solutions Limited, operators of the two hydro power plants gave the warning to farming communities living along floodplains of the downstream areas of the two hydroelectric dams to move further upland because the rains will be steadied in the coming weeks.
Mainstream Energy Solutions Limited which won bids to manage the two hydro dams said that the warning must be heeded to avoid unpleasant consequences even as the dams swell up to their brims with water.
Several communities including Agwara and Borgu councils of Niger state have already started feeling their proximity to Kainji Dam as the water level has swollen to its peak and spills out the excess to surrounding farmlands along the fringes of the dam.
Chairman of Agwara council, Mal. Jarafu Mohammed, had cried out to the authorities of the Kainji Hydro Dam to release the water at its intake reservoirs through the spill-gates of the dam to save the large expanse of rice fields adjoining the dam area.
Several rice farmers at Agwara, Roffia, Kokali, Papiri, Bunsuru, Suteku and Yawuri areas had already been submerged by water from the swollen reservoirs of the Kainji hydroelectric dam, which the chairman said, has sent fears to farming communities in the area.
Similarly, several hectres of rice farms in Borgu council in places like; Rafi, Malale, Wawa and their neighborhoods were swept away by flood and the affected rice farms alone in the two local government areas are estimated at over N10 million.
The situation in Shiroro council, the host to Nigeria’s third major hydro electricity power generating dam, is also not different as farmers are already jittery over what could befall their investments should the management release excess water from the reservoir.
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