Following the flood that ravaged Trademore estate in Lugbe, Abuja, in the early hours of Friday, some residents have shared their experiences and thoughts.
A large part of the estate, located in the Lugbe axis of the capital city, along the airport road, was flooded after the downpour which lasted hours.
Several houses, vehicles, shops and other properties were damaged and displaced by the flood.
While PREMIUM TIMES reporters were interviewing residents of the estate, residents discovered a corpse, at about 12:30 p.m., stuck beneath the drainage at the entrance of the estate.
Alhaji Ashiru, a Police Inspector recently posted to the area, who was narrating how he lost all his properties to the flood, rushed to pull out the corpse from the canal with the help of other residents around.
Audu Faruk, a resident and witness of the flood, said he saw several people being dragged away by the flood but he could only rescue a few.
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He said he was sleeping when the flood started, and all of a sudden he saw his bed floating.
Narrating his experience, Faruk said: “I just came back from work and I wanted to take a short nap around 8:30 a.m. I saw that the weather had changed and It was about to rain and I decided to take a short nap.
“Few minutes after I laid on the bed to relax, I noticed that my body was wet and the room was cold, so I stood up to see what was happening. I saw that the room had been filled with water. I was surprised and I decided to check what was going on outside. Then I opened the door and I saw that everywhere had been flooded.”
On his part, Ashiru, the Police Inspector, said the flood could have claimed many lives if it occurred in the night.
“If the flood had occurred in the night, it could have claimed the lives of many of the occupants of this estate,” he said.
“My brother (Audu) was sleeping when he noticed that his mattress was soaked with water. He immediately jumped up and by the time he opened the door, the flood gushed into his house. He was even the person that saved all of us in this house.”
Ashiru said he was not aware that the estate is prone to floods of such magnitude because he was newly transferred to Abuja.
“I’m not aware something like this used to happen in this area, this is my first time witnessing flooding in this area. I am new here, I was transferred here about four months ago,” he told PREMIUM TIMES in an interview.
Another resident who identified himself as Isah, described the flood experience as a “terrible” episode. He said the estate is located on a waterway and that lives and properties are at stake.
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“I heard they do experience flooding once in a while here. I had a first-hand experience of the flood yesterday and it was terrible,” he said.
Isah said a few children were stuck in a school located near the road, about 100 metres from the major drainage. He added that the children were rescued through the school fence.
“The water was too high. The school bus parked here was floating like a balloon on the water. It was so massive and I have not seen anything like that before,” Isah said.
The Chairman of the Trademore Estate Association, Adewale Osinaike, said the amount of work that the developer of the estate was asked to do internally was done but that the government is yet to do what they are supposed to do to stop the flood from reoccurring.
“The government has always paid a leap service to things like this. This has been a recurring decimal for us over the years,” he said.
Osinaike said that each time a flood incident occurs, all the agencies of government (FERMA, NEMA, and FCDA) would come and make promises without taking any action.
“In fact, there was an incident when the minister of state for FCT came as well. They all come and they would talk big but talk is cheap but at the end of the day, they don’t do anything,” he said.
