Research dispatch 03
Published 26 September 2026
Okoye Sunday
On 21 September, the Lagos State Government directed residents of flood-prone areas to relocate, following a seven-day alert issued by the Nigerian Hydrological Services Agency for 19 to 25 September. Fourteen communities were named. The Commissioner for Environment and Water Resources, Tokunbo Wahab, urged residents to move to higher ground rather than wait for floodwaters to rise.
On 23 September, day five of that alert, I visited four of those communities and spoke to fifteen people.
Not one had received an official alert.
What they said
Eti-Osa. A resident who works at the LCDA office. He heard on television on Monday, a day after the directive. Asked whether he understood what was said, he said no. What he did about it: cleared gutters and sewage. He is staying. It’s home. Nobody told him where to go.
Oke-Ira Nla, Ajah. An official of the Lagos State Waterways Authority. He personally received no alert. He was speaking for himself, not for his agency. LASWA may have been notified through channels that did not reach him. This does not establish otherwise.
Jetty Terminal B, Badore. Three people, at a site on the state’s own list.
The security officer had heard nothing.
The facility manager, Usman Jubril, received no official alert. He heard on radio, and separately his own workers heard it and told him. On the terminal’s risk, he said: we don’t have canal, no issues of flooding, never had issues of flooding. On who actually informs them about water conditions, he said: the boat operators are the ones informing us, because they are on the water always.
So I asked a boat operator.
Engr. Omotayo Ekujumi received no alert either. Asked how he judges when the water is dangerous, he said: “through current and time.” Asked whether he had ever received any official notice about water conditions, at any time, he said never.
Ilaje Waterfront. Ten people. Workers, residents, and a military security officer. None had received anything. The security officer has no radio, no television, and cannot reliably use his phone.
What the pattern is
Fifteen people. Four named areas. None received an official alert. Two heard something, both through broadcast media, one of them a day late.
The facility manager’s sentence looked at first like the finding: an unofficial network carrying the warning where the official one failed.
It is not that. The boat operator received nothing either. What he supplies is not information passed down a chain. It is direct observation. Current and time.
Which means there is no parallel distribution network. There is a radio, and there are men reading the river with their eyes.
That works for conditions arriving now. It cannot work for a hazard forecast seven days ahead by a national agency, because nothing connects the agency to the men on the water.
And when a man says he has never received any official notice, in a working life spent on the water, at a terminal the state has placed on its own vulnerable-areas list, that is not a lapse. There is no channel to that man. There has never been one.
The part that is not a failure of forecasting
Nigeria’s forecasting institutions are not the weak link, and this dispatch is not an attack on them.
NiMet published the 2026 Seasonal Climate Prediction in February. NIHSA published the Annual Flood Outlook in April, naming 132 local government areas as high-risk. The September alert was issued on time. Cameroon notifies NIHSA before releasing water from the Lagdo dam.
NEMA’s own 2025 after-action review was described as a roadmap to bridge the gap between scientific forecasts and field-level implementation.
And NiMet, responding to written questions from me on 3 September and granting permission to publish its position attributed to its Director-General Professor Charles Anosike, stated that the chain most often weakens at the point where technical information must be translated into timely, practical and trusted action at local government and community level. The challenge, NiMet added, is often not simply whether technical information exists, but whether it is converted quickly enough into trusted, locally understood instructions that people and institutions can act upon.
That is the national meteorological agency identifying the failure point in its own system, on the record.
Fifteen people in four communities are what that failure point looks like from the ground.
What this does not establish
- That nothing was sent. I have established that these fifteen people did not receive an alert. I have not established what dissemination was carried out, by whom, or through which channel. Those are different claims and I am publishing only the first.
- That this is representative. Fifteen interviews in one day is a strong signal and not a survey. Several of the respondents were connected to waterfront operations rather than households, though the ten at Ilaje Waterfront include residents and workers.
- That nobody moved. People who received a warning and relocated would not be present to be interviewed. That is a real limit on this method and I note it rather than work around it.
Right of reply
These findings have been put in writing to the Commissioner for Environment and Water Resources, to NIHSA and to LASEMA, with six questions including what dissemination was carried out, whether the named communities were notified directly, whether institutional users including LASWA and the Jetty Terminal B operators were notified, where residents are supposed to relocate to, on what basis Jetty Terminal B was listed as vulnerable, and whether any mechanism exists for reaching people without radio, television or reliable phone access.
NIHSA and NEMA received an earlier set of questions on 3 September and have not replied.
Any response will be published here in full.
Consent
Usman Jubril and Engr. Omotayo Ekujumi are named with consent, given on 23 September 2026. All other respondents are described by role and location only.
Okoye Sunday is an independent researcher in Lagos. [email protected]