A three-hour downpour that started at about 11pm on Wednesday, April 9, 2014 in Ilorin which resulted in a flood has claimed the lives of 3 people.
Two of the victims were children identified simply as Basirat, 4 years and Garfa, 3 years who came to pay a visit to their grandmother.about 20 cars were destroyed in the flood as well.
The state Commissioner for Environment, Alhaji Abubakar Mora, on his visit to the affected area disclosed that the drainage system needs serious and urgent attention
Sun News reports:
No fewer than three persons were feared dead on Wednesday night in Ilorin due to flood which also swept away about 20 vehicles in Omosebi and Adisco areas of Kwara State capital.
Two of the victims of the flood that was induced by a three-hour downpour that started at about 11pm were children identified simply as Basirat, aged four and half years and Garfa, aged three years.
They were said to be spending the holidays with their grandmother in a building few metres away from a hotel belonging to a serving senator.
According to eyewitness account, the kids drowned when one of them opened the front door of their apartment in an attempt to escape the flood that had reached the window level of the building. Also, the corpse of another victim, a male, was discovered at the Coca-Cola area of the city early in the morning.
When Daily Sun visited Adisco area, angry youths descended on the hotel owned by the senator, blaming a construction on a part of the property for the devastating flood.
But for the quick intervention of security men, the youths would have burnt down the hotel. They were already hurling stones at the property before several teams of policemen that arrived in the scene persuaded them to sheathe their swords. Policemen were later stationed to guard the property.
Checks revealed that about 1000 passengers on a train travelling from Lagos to the North were also stranded as a section of the rail track behind Kingdom Heritage Secondary School, was also affected.
The flood cut off a large chunk of soil from beneath the rail track and cut the road into two, thus making it impassable for the train. One of the passengers, Sofi Mufiu, lamented that they had spent over nine hours on the track without help from any official of the Nigeria Railway Corporation.
At least, 11 cars in the workshop of a car painter, Mr Razaq Jimoh, situated beside Omosebi Hospital, were washed away by the flood. Few of the cars were seen about a kilometre away from the workshop, while several vehicles belonging to transport companies operating in the vicinity of the hotel were also washed away.
A resident, who identified himself simply as Israel said the disaster could have been avoided if a slab at the front of the hotel was not there.
The state Commissioner for Environment, Alhaji Abubakar Mora, who toured the affected areas early in the morning, agreed that there was an urgent need to act on the drainage and the slab.
He said: “We have seen the cause of the flood; the blockage of the drainage is the cause and we will send our experts here on time to come and see and tell us how to go about it.”
