Putting on my conical tin-foil thinking cap for a moment, I got to wondering whether there might indeed exist a direct cause and effect relationship between the recently completed dredging of the River Niger, and the unprecedented floods of 2012, which have wiped out much of Nigeria’s most fertile agricultural land, and rendered thousands of villagers homeless.

All along the course of the River Niger, seasonally inundated flood-plains, enriched with alluvial deposits, have for generations yielded bounteous harvests to farmers, but, the drastic alteration of the River Niger’s course, that occurred as a result of the dredging carried out along much of that river, appears to have impacted the environment in ways not imagined by the proponents of that dredging operation.

What do y’all think? Are River Niger’s massive 2012 floods the result of global warming, or are the unfolding flood disasters, and the anticipated food crisis in Nigeria, simply consequences of an ambitious dredging project gone awry ?

They said its a dam in cameroon.

tpia@:
They said its a dam in cameroon.

Maybe the floods are the cumulative effect of the River Niger dredging, global warming and the release of dam waters in Cameroun. My suspicion is the dredging may be the prime culprit.

We had more rain last year but experienced less flooding . . . I think you 've raised a good question.

That dredging caused the massive flooding does not make sense to me. If anything, dredging should help to reduce flooding because one of its purposes is to gather up bottom sediments and removing them, thus allowing water to flow more freely.

The opening of Cameroon dams is more likely a major factor. GEJ and his peeps need to look into this as a national security issue. If indeed the Cameroonians intensional or unintensional caused this flooding, Nigeria must demand some sort of control of those dams.

most of the comments here reflect gross ignorance of what dredging itself is about. Dredging of the river niger acted like a buffer in these years flood otherwise the volume of water that would have spilt to most of the flood plain would have been twice what we had.

some expert attributed these years flood to global warming but i suspect its just the easiest culprit for any recent unusual enviromental challenge. others even said its the El nino that affects different continent time to time and that for me is the best localized peg to fit these experience.

excondido: most of the comments here reflect gross ignorance of what dredging itself is about. Dredging of the river niger acted like a buffer in these years flood otherwise the volume of water that would have spilt to most of the flood plain would have been twice what we had.

I also expected that dredging would create a freer flow of water through the river Niger, which would seem to suggest that flooding would be less likely with the river deepened by dredging, since all that extra water volume, be that from rainfall, or from dams opened upstream, would be safely accommodated by the articifically enhanced river depth brought about by dredging.

What has occurred is thus the reverse of the expected outcome from the just completed dredging, in that the Niger river, rather than retain its original path, has spread out to inundate low-lying farmland and villages. If, as Sheyguy mentioned, there has actually been LESS rainfall in Nigeria for 2012 than there was in 2011, there is something really baffling at work, and my thoughts keep circling back to possible un-anticipated effects of dredging. Perhaps the more rapid flow of River Niger, brought about by that dredging operation, has created hydrodynamic effects that produced the exact opposite of the outcome that conventional wisdom would dictate.

Water is a mighty powerful force, and the River Niger is a huge body of water. My layman's conclusion is that the dredging of that river was a mistake of monumental proportions, whose cost can only be tallied when the rains subside, giving way to the dry season.

^^^^ Nice theory you have up there, but it does not explain why there has been more flooding along the River Benue basin, an area which is just downstream of the opened Cameroon dams. Benue was not dredged. Do you have any theory on the why flooding of Benue was worse that that of the River Niger?

ndu_chucks: ^^^^ Nice theory you have up there, but it does not explain why there has been more flooding along the River Benue basin, an area which is just downstream of the opened Cameroon dams. Benue was not dredged. Do you have any theory on the why flooding of Benue was worse that that of the River Niger?

So, it looks like the overflow of that Camerounian dam generated floods that commenced in the northern reaches of the Niger river, and then moved southward, while being compounded by the expansion of river volume due to seasonal rains.

Still and all, it is too early to entirely discount the possibility that some hitherto unknown side-effect of that Niger River dredging project also became an unforseen variable in the equation that yielded Nigeria's unfolding flood disaster, all along the Niger river basin.