Millions of crops and hundreds of hectares of land, as been
lost to flooding in Gummi Local Government area of Zamfara State. Consequently,
the #Walkt oMali team chose the LGA as its first stop. The journey from Gusau,
the capital of Zamfara to Gummi is about
300km. We had to sleep at Anka, while on Monday January 20 we proceeded to
Gummi. To our surprise, it took us one hour to get a car to hitchhike on!
Gummi looks more developed than Anka, we visited the plalace
of the Emir, and the team was welcomed by the Gummi senior district head,
Lawali Banjiye( Bunun) . We had a one hour of focus group discussion at the
palace about environmental and peace building issues within the community after
which, we confirmed our community of interest was Gutsura.
Located about 60km from Gummi town, Gutsura is situated by
the Zamfara River, which took its source from the River Niger. The village has no source of power and health
center, but has an MTN mobile network coverage, with just one well as their
source of water. “Our community has been experiencing flooding for the past 10
years” explained Alhaji Umaru Nasarawa, the village head. Gutsura has about 570
households and 3,000 residents. Alhaji Umar also explained how swift they were
able to have access to relief materials during the 2013 flood. Nevertheless, he
reiterated that government has not helped in relocation [construction of permanent
buildings, providing water, and electricity] of Gutsura to the new site
allocated to them at New Gutsura
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| The team with Tukur at the New Gutsura Site |
The #WalktoMali team engaged the youths of the community to
a participatory mapping exercise while also documenting their local knowledge –
the community itself has developed building a local embankment to reduce the
impact of the flood. While this might not be enough, much will be needed to
help build a solid, more concrete and longer embankment. Muhammad Tukur, the community spokesperson emphasized on how
the village needs an urgent attention.
We have made up our mind to start moving
to New Gutsura since the government has not started erecting shelter, but our
greatest challenge is getting water from the site. I have personally dug three
wells at the site, but couldn’t get water from one!” lamented Tukur.
As the rains will soon be here again, this village will be left with building more resilience to prevent flooding, except the government, international aid agencies, private companies build houses and important social amenities for this ailing community, or help them build a stronger embankment to prevent the next flooding, that is always experience due to the rise in water level from the Mashayar Dantudu River.
