Kogi State Governor, Yahaya Bello Monday raised the alarm that 10 local governments in his state have been submerged by flood.
He spoke with State House correspondents after meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
The governor who lamented that Kogi has been the worst hit by the current wave of flooding asked President Buhari to offer a helping hand.
Reports said no fewer than 200 communities have been submerged by flood in Koton-karfe Local Government area of Kogi State by the ravaging flood, while thousands of residents have been displaced.
The state government had last month set up five camps to accommodate about 64 of the communities displaced by flood in Koton-karfe last month. This week, the state government further set up temporary camps for victims of flood in Lokoja, as more houses get submerged in the confluence state.
Governor Bello, however, expressed appreciation to the President for directing relevant agencies to come to the aid of the state.
Notwithstanding, he said that the state still needs more relief materials adding that the resources of the state have been over stretched.
He said: “As usual I came to brief Mr. President on situation report and the happenings in my state; periodically. I am sure you are all aware of the flood problem that is happening all over the country and Kogi is worst hit being the confluence state, confluence of the two rivers.
“So, we are worst hit and I needed to come and present the report to him by myself. Even though I sincerely appreciate Mr President for deploying relevant agencies like NEMA and all the security agencies to come to our aid.
” As I speak to you, NEMA is on their way to Lokoja to access the level of damage and we received substantial amount of relief materials so far, but it is not enough. I need to present the report to him as well and also to tell him about the security of the state and how we are doing.
“We are doing very well and I thank all the security agencies who have been assisting us to make sure we curb insecurity in the state. So, these are the issues that brought me to come and explain to Mr. President.
“We experience this periodically, 2012, we were worst hit, we are praying that the situation will not exceed that this year. We are normally proactive to sensitize the people and evacuate them to high ground.
“We have created over 33 camps in Kogi State. As I speak with you, between nine to ten local governments are under water, you can imagine the pressure on our resources. So, we are doing our best in collaboration with federal agencies and security agencies to make sure that we evacuate them to high grounds, IDP camps and provide security to them and relief materials including medicals.
The governor also boasted that Kogi will double votes given Buhari in 2019 assuring that it will be a clean sweep for the APC in the state.
His words: “This is the era where a lot of hopes, even if it is false, people build their castle in the air. You can see that Mr. President is good to go. I want to assure Nigerians that the vote for Mr. President in 2019 is going to double that of 2015.
“In my own state, I can assure you, take my words, we are going to have all the twenty five House of Assembly members, all the nine House of Representatives members and all the three Senators for APC in this 2019 election.
“We did it in all other states and in my state you can see in the last by-election the gap when the election was conducted in 2015 between the APC winner and the PDP was just about 7,000, but in this last by-election, we doubled the gap, so that is an indication.
“Two, by my style of leadership in Kogi State, we met Kogi State House of Assembly, APC in minority, we have overwhelming majority today, we have less than 85,000 registered in Kogi State for APC, as at today we have over a million membership in the state.
“Yesterday (Sunday) we had a decamping rally where SDP state chapter collapsed, ADP, ADC, PDP majority of them including Kwamkwasiya, they burnt their cap yesterday, they drove away the SDP horse yesterday. So that is the movement and it is across the nation not only in Kogi state.”
On Facebook assertion that the president will lose the 2019 elections, he said: “I think there is a polling unit in the Facebook, so they cast their votes in the Facebook, on ground I can assure you of total victory.”
