When Rain Becomes Breaking News

Femi Akintunde-Johnson

The rain arrived as it always does. It did not announce itself with political affiliation, religious persuasion or ethnic identity. It simply fell from the heavens, as rain has done since creation. Within hours, roads disappeared beneath brown water, homes became reluctant swimming pools, vehicles stalled in the middle of flooded streets, businesses shut their doors, electricity infrastructure buckled, and thousands of Lagosians resigned themselves to yet another annual ritual of inconvenience, anxiety and avoidable loss.

By the following morning, the script had become painfully familiar. Government agencies commenced damage assessments. Emergency responders swung into action. Commissioners explained the intensity of the downpour. Residents blamed blocked drains. Environmental officials reminded citizens not to dump refuse into canals. Weather experts pointed to climate change. The media documented another chapter in Nigeria’s perennial rainy-season diary. Before long, the floodwaters would recede, public outrage would evaporate with them, and everyone would quietly prepare for the next deluge.

If this sounds repetitive, it is because it is. One would have thought that after more than six decades of independence – and well over a century of organised urban development in cities like Lagos – we would have graduated beyond treating seasonal rainfall as though it were an unexpected national emergency. Rain is not the problem. It has always rained in Nigeria. What has changed is our astonishing ability to convert a natural occurrence into an annual humanitarian and economic crisis.

Some countries prepare for winter. Others anticipate hurricanes, tornadoes or earthquakes. We, it would appear, prepare for press conferences.

Every rainy season, we rediscover the same vocabulary: blocked drains, illegal structures, indiscriminate refuse disposal, inadequate drainage infrastructure, wetlands under assault, climate change, tidal effects and exceptional rainfall. Every year, the explanations remain almost identical. One almost expects government officials to laminate the previous year’s statements, replace the date and issue them afresh.

Yet, beneath the familiar official explanations lies an uncomfortable truth. Flooding in our major cities is increasingly less an environmental phenomenon than a planning failure accumulated over decades. Successive administrations have inherited problems, certainly, but many have also enthusiastically added fresh layers to them. We have buried wetlands under concrete, reclaimed swamps without adequate engineering, and then express surprise when water insists on returning to where it has flowed for centuries.

Natural waterways have been narrowed, diverted or completely blocked. Buildings have emerged where common sense, engineering principles and approved master plans insisted they never should. Influential developers have treated drainage alignments as optional suggestions rather than compulsory safeguards. Regulators have too often discovered their enforcement zeal only after disaster has occurred.

Water possesses a stubborn memory. It remembers every channel through which it once flowed, and it has an irritating habit of trying to reclaim those pathways regardless of whose shopping complex, luxury apartment or imposing hotel now occupies the space. Unfortunately, when water decides to recover its territory, title deeds become remarkably unpersuasive.

To be fair, government alone cannot carry the entire burden. Citizens have contributed generously to this annual spectacle. We have treated drainage channels as convenient refuse bins, converting plastic bottles, food containers, old mattresses and every imaginable domestic waste into engineering obstacles. Community after community waits patiently for government to clear drains that residents have spent months enthusiastically clogging. Environmental sanitation is too often regarded as somebody else’s responsibility until floodwater begins knocking on the front door.

Still, leadership must carry the heavier responsibility. Governments exist precisely to anticipate predictable challenges and prevent avoidable disasters. Nobody should be surprised that Lagos experiences heavy rainfall between June and September. It would be far more surprising if it did not. Therefore, drainage maintenance, canal dredging, enforcement against illegal developments and flood-control infrastructure ought to operate as permanent governance priorities rather than seasonal emergency exercises.

Beyond the immediate images of submerged roads lies an economic story that rarely receives sufficient attention. Every flooded street represents productive hours lost. Every stranded commuter translates into reduced economic output. Every submerged shop means damaged inventory. Every flooded transformer disrupts businesses far beyond the immediate neighbourhood. Schoolchildren lose valuable learning time. Hospitals struggle with access. Insurance claims rise. Public health risks multiply as contaminated water spreads disease. What appears as “temporary flooding” often leaves permanent financial scars on families already battling inflation and declining purchasing power.

Then there is the psychological toll. We, as Nigerians, have become accustomed to living in a permanent state of anticipation. During the dry season, we worry about water scarcity. During the rains, we worry about flooding. We have become experts at adapting to circumstances that more organised societies long ago decided were unacceptable. There is resilience in that adaptability, but there is also danger. When people become too accustomed to dysfunction, they gradually lower their expectations of governance.

 That expectation must rise again. The solutions are neither mysterious nor revolutionary. Urban planning must cease being a decorative chapter in official documents and become an uncompromising instrument of public policy. Illegal developments obstructing natural waterways should attract swift enforcement regardless of the status of their owners. Drainage infrastructure requires continuous maintenance rather than ceremonial desilting after television cameras have arrived. Local governments, whose proximity to communities ought to make them the first guardians of environmental order, must become visible beyond the collection of market levies and political mobilisation.

  Equally important is a civic reawakening. Environmental responsibility cannot be outsourced entirely to government. Residents’ associations, schools, religious institutions and community organisations must become active custodians of their immediate surroundings. A citizen who throws refuse into a drainage channel today should not be surprised when tomorrow’s flood chooses his own doorstep for revenge.

Climate change is real, and extreme weather events are becoming more frequent across the world. That reality demands greater investment in resilient infrastructure, improved weather forecasting, modern drainage engineering and smarter urban expansion. It cannot become a convenient alibi for decades of poor planning or inconsistent enforcement. Countries facing far harsher environmental conditions have demonstrated that preparedness often matters more than geography.

Ultimately, this conversation is about more than rain. It is about whether we are capable of learning from our own history. Nations mature when they stop treating recurring disasters as isolated incidents and begin addressing the structural weaknesses that produce them. We already know where the flood-prone communities are. We know which canals require expansion. We know the wetlands under relentless assault. We know the habitual offenders who build where they should not. We even know the excuses that will be offered after the next heavy rainfall.

What remains uncertain is whether we possess the collective discipline to break the cycle. Because there is something profoundly troubling about a country that continues to be defeated, year after year, by a rainy season whose arrival is neither secret nor sudden. Rain should nourish our land, replenish our water bodies and sustain our agriculture. It should not annually expose the poverty of our planning, the weakness of our enforcement and the shortness of our institutional memory.

Until we confront those deeper failures, the next flood is not a possibility. It is merely an appointment.