Lake Nyos: A disaster foretold

The federal government is yet to implement any of the recommendations that might prevent the likely eruption of the volcanic Lake Nyos, three years after a technical team assessing the danger of the lake submitted its report.

Only last January, the government announced that N26 billion had been budgeted to construct the much needed buffer dam at the Nigeria side of the lake.

The Minister of Agriculture and Water Resources, Sayyadi Ruma, who disclosed this said the threat of the lake was real and is a serious source of concern to the government.

“The threat of Lake Nyos is real, government has conducted a critical study on the implication of a possible eruption and concluded that thousands of lives were at risk in frontline states,” he said.

“As a result of this, and for the safety of Nigerians, government has decided to construct a buffer dam which will reduce the impact of any possible eruption.”

Work on the dam is yet to start, although the government study was completed in 2007. That year, the federal government constituted a technical committee with membership from its agencies and the academia, to undertake an assessment tour of the lake and recommend appropriate measures to safeguard Nigerians.

The committee visited states bordering the lake and went to the foot of the lake to assess the level of leakage. It completed its assignment before the end of ex-president Obasanjo’s tenure.

Part of the submissions of the committee made to Babagana Kingibe, the then Secretary to the Government of the Federation, was that over 40 million Nigerians were at risk should the lake erupt.

The committee also said some states hitherto considered safe, are now vulnerable. These include Kogi, Enugu, Adamawa and Taraba states. It therefore, urged the federal government to, as a matter of urgency, instal an early warning system at strategic positions around the lake to alert Nigerians of any impending danger.

It also advised government to construct some buffer dams at the foot of the lake to reduce the impact of any eruption; as it was discovered that more than 5 million cubic meters of water would be released, along with tonnes of stones, should the base of the lake cave in.

Shades of fear

In 2006, the Benue State government raised the alarm about the possibility of a volcanic eruption at the Lake Nyos. Though located in Western Cameroon, the lake is adjacent to Nigeria in the elbow region of West Africa. The government had then warned that in the event of a possible eruption, human lives and properties spread over about 12 out of the state’s 23 local governments would be severely affected.

It further stated that human casualties in the entire country could be in millions as other Nigerian states bordering Cameroon were likely to be affected.

The Benue alarm followed the discovery by scientists and local farmers of an unusual leakage at the foot of the lake, considered to be faster than what used to be.

At least two agencies of the United Nations have voiced their fears about the latent dangers of the lake. According to the United Nations Environment Programme the world would witness the greatest humanitarian crisis on the African continent should the lake erupt.

There are also warnings that a natural barrier hemming in the lake waters is on the brink of collapse, although the government of Cameroon has said there was no cause to fear.

A report issued recently by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs noted that if the lake fails, water would rush downstream and flood several villages in Cameroon and Nigeria.

The report also said that hundreds of thousands of people would be killed; livestock and farmlands would be destroyed.

But as the issues continue to generate reactions from within and outside Nigeria, scientists from Cameroon’s Institute of Mining and Geological Research have allayed the fears.

Though they acknowledged that the dam around the lake has weakened, Cameroon says there’s no fear of an immediate threat of collapse. It also informed a United Nations’s inspection team, which said the dam had sagged seriously and would not last another two decades unless it is reinforced, that such a measure was too expensive for it to bear.

Once bitten…

There ought not to be any quibbling over the dangers posed by Lake Nyos. A similar discovery was made in 1986. But due to inaction, a rich stream of carbon dioxide was expelled from the floor of the lake at a speed of about 100km per hour.

This poisonous cloud quickly enveloped houses that were within 120 meters above the shore line of the lake and, because its density was 1.5 times that of air, the gaseous mass hugged the ground surface and descended the valley at about 20 to 30km per hour. It killed some 2,000 people and 6,000 head of livestock.

One of the survivors of that deadly eruption was Joseph Nkwain, from the Subum region of the Cameroon.

In his testimony afterwards, Mr. Nkwain said he was awakened at about midnight on that fateful day by a loud noise. “I could not speak,” he said. “I became unconscious. I could not open my mouth because then I smelled something terrible. I heard my daughter snoring in a terrible way, very abnormal; when crossing to her bed, I collapsed and fell.”

He came out of his deep slumber the next morning only to discover that most of his neighbours were no more, as they had died from asphyxiation.

This was the fate the Benue government was trying to avoid for its citizens when it raised the alarm. The state had already taken some proactive measures, including the building of resettlement camps with a grant from the federal government.

A geologist at the University of Jos, Okar Matthew, said that it was regrettable that the government was slow in implementing the recommendations of the technical committee.

Dr. Matthew said the government should have established evacuation sites, preparatory to any eruption, by now if it was responsive to the needs of its citizens.

Nigeria Unite, a Benue-based non-governmental organisation working to highlight the dangers of the lake, warned that its eruption would create more problems for the country than the amount to be spent preventing it.

Its chairperson, Justina Akor, appealed to the government to put in place measures that would protect Nigerians from any possible disaster. “The ball is now in the court of Nigeria to adopt measures capable of protecting its citizens from the dangers posed by the lake,” she said.