Dear Rotimi Amaechi: Yes, You Built the Roads – But Where Are the Drainages? -By Vitus Ozoke, PhD

I have been amused by some of the proposed solutions to the flooding that disrupted activities during the Nigerian Bar Association Annual General Conference in Port Harcourt.

One suggestion is that the NBA should henceforth hold its Annual General Conference in November or January, well outside the rainy season. My dear friend, Barrister K.C Olemeforo, made a version of this argument, obviously from the perfectly understandable perspective of ensuring that lawyers attending Africa’s largest gathering of legal practitioners are spared the indignity and inconvenience of wading through floodwater.

Others have gone even further. Don’t hold the conference in Rivers State, they say. Why? Because it is Rivers State. There are rivers there. Water! And, as inevitably happens in Nigeria, somebody eventually discovered God. Rain is a blessing, we were reminded. Indeed. Rain is a blessing. Flooding is not.

And therein lies the problem with this entire conversation. We are once again doing that peculiarly Nigerian thing, expending enormous intellectual and spiritual energy to explain away a failure that should simply make us angry.

The problem is not August. The problem is not Port Harcourt. The problem is not Rivers State. The problem is not rain. And God certainly has nothing to do with it. The problem is governance. More specifically, the problem is the Nigerian political culture that builds roads without adequate drainage, rehabilitates roads without adequate drainage, commissions roads without adequate drainage, photographs roads without adequate drainage, celebrates roads without adequate drainage – and, very possibly and supposedly, pays contractors for drainage that exists beautifully in government files but mysteriously disappears when you step outside.

That is the conversation we should be having. Not whether Nigerian lawyers should rearrange their professional calendars around the inability of Nigerian governments to drain rainwater. Not whether the NBA should flee Port Harcourt whenever the clouds gather. Not whether Rivers State has too much water.

Build the damn drainage! It really is that simple.

The proposal to move major events to November or January may make perfect logistical sense for an event planner operating in Nigeria as it presently exists. But as public policy, it represents surrender.

Think about what we are saying. Nigeria’s rainy season lasts several months. Are we seriously proposing that conferences, weddings, conventions, sporting events, political gatherings, trade fairs, festivals, academic meetings, and other major activities retreat to the dry months because Nigerian cities cannot cope with rainfall? What happens to the rest of the year? Do we post a sign at the entrance to Abuja: NIGERIA CLOSED DUE TO RAIN. PLEASE RETURN IN NOVEMBER.

A functioning society does not organize itself around the failure of its infrastructure. It builds infrastructure around the predictable rhythms of society and nature. Rainfall is not an ambush. August did not sneak up on Port Harcourt. The rainy season is not an unforeseen act of sabotage by the heavens.

We know rain will fall. We know approximately when it will fall. We know approximately how much rainfall different parts of the country receive. The entire purpose of urban planning is to anticipate precisely these factors.

You construct drains. You maintain them. You create channels for stormwater. You prevent indiscriminate development along natural waterways. You enforce building regulations. You desilt drainage systems. You properly grade roads. You design cities so that when water falls from the sky, it has somewhere to go other than people’s houses, cars, shops – and conference trousers. That is government.

There is another reason the Port Harcourt spectacle should embarrass us. Nigeria, for all its troubles, is extraordinarily fortunate in one respect: nature has been relatively kind to us. Think about it. We do not spend every year preparing coastal cities for Category 4 and 5 hurricanes. We do not routinely hear tornado sirens send entire communities scrambling into underground shelters as funnels tear houses from their foundations. We do not wake up to three feet of snow and spend billions deploying fleets of snowplows and salt trucks just to make highways usable again. We do not routinely face blizzards that shut airports, freeze power lines, and make roads impassable. We do not have to design ordinary Nigerian homes around months of subzero winter temperatures.

For the most part, our recurring meteorological challenge is much simpler. Water falls from the sky. Rain. Ordinary, predictable, seasonal rain. And somehow, even that defeats us. That should frighten us more than it amuses us. If Nigeria cannot adequately prepare for something as predictable as the rainy season, one has to wonder what would become of us if we lived in a geography routinely exposed to hurricanes, tornado outbreaks, blizzards, or other catastrophic weather events.

Imagine Nigeria receiving a hurricane warning that requires the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people. Imagine the emergency contracts. Imagine the relief funds. Imagine the procurement. Imagine the temporary shelters. Imagine the food distribution. Imagine the reconstruction contracts. Imagine billions and billions of naira suddenly released under the magical Nigerian phrase “emergency intervention.” Now, tell me – with a straight face – that you are not terrified.

In countries regularly exposed to extreme weather, disaster preparedness requires governments to stockpile supplies, maintain emergency shelters, develop evacuation routes, establish warning systems, strengthen buildings and infrastructure, pre-position rescue personnel and equipment, and prepare recovery mechanisms well before a disaster strikes.

In Nigeria, we cannot consistently keep an ordinary roadside drain open. That is where corruption ceases to be merely an economic problem and becomes a question of human survival. Corruption during normal times steals money, but corruption during catastrophe steals lives.

If a government can award a drainage contract and leave citizens standing waist-deep in water after an ordinary rainfall, imagine that same political and bureaucratic culture administering billions in emergency hurricane relief. The disaster itself might be only the first. The recovery effort could be the second.

Contracts would be inflated. Supplies could disappear. Relief materials could be used to obtain political party membership cards. Emergency funds might develop legs. Reconstruction projects could be repeatedly budgeted for and perpetually unfinished. While committees investigated other committees, citizens would be left to contribute money on WhatsApp to rescue their relatives. Then somebody would organize a prayer session. That is the terrifying hypothetical.

Perhaps Nigerians should occasionally look to weather disasters elsewhere and recognize how merciful our geography has been amid our dysfunction. Louisiana prepares for hurricanes. North American cities prepare for snowstorms. Communities across the American Midwest prepare for tornadoes. Japan prepares for earthquakes and typhoons. The Netherlands has spent generations engineering an extraordinary national relationship with water.

Nigeria knows that rain will come. We know approximately when it will come. We know where flooding repeatedly occurs. We know what drainage does. And still, year after year, rain falls, and portions of our cities surrender. There is something profoundly indicting about that. We have been given one of nature’s more manageable tests, and corruption keeps making us fail it.

Perhaps the proper response when Port Harcourt floods is not “Well, it is rainy season.” It should be “Thank God this is only rain.” If Nigeria had to confront, year after year, the scale of natural disasters that some other countries have learned to prepare for, withstand, and recover from, our greatest vulnerability might not be hurricanes, tornadoes, or blizzards. It might be the people entrusted with the disaster-relief budget.

Then there is the hilarious suggestion that the NBA should avoid Rivers State because it is, well, full of rivers. By that logic, humanity should have abandoned some of the world’s great waterfront cities centuries ago. Hawaii is surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, and New Orleans sits in the Mississippi River delta, with much of the city famously at or below sea level.

Amsterdam has lived with water for centuries. Venice is literally built in a lagoon. Singapore is a tropical island city-state that receives substantial rainfall. Miami sits between the Atlantic Ocean and the Everglades. London has the Thames running through it. New York is a coastal metropolis built around rivers, bays, and the ocean.

People do not therefore suspend civilization every time clouds appear. Conferences are held. Businesses open. Schools operate. Planes take off and land. Hotels receive guests. People go to work. Society continues. These places certainly experience flooding – sometimes catastrophic flooding – and climate change is making extreme rainfall and coastal flooding more frequent and severe for cities around the world.

The distinction is not that competent societies have somehow abolished water. Rather, serious societies treat water management as an engineering and governance problem, not as a theological mystery or a geographical curse.

Rivers State does not flood because someone mischievously named it Rivers State. Port Harcourt floods because rainfall interacts with drainage capacity, urban development, maintenance, topography, and planning. Those are things governments are elected to manage. Which brings me to the delicious irony supplied by Rotimi Amaechi.

Earlier at the same NBA conference, Amaechi and Omoyele Sowore had a memorable confrontation. Amaechi defended his government record by challenging Rivers lawyers to take Sowore around and show him his administration’s projects. He then listed them: “I built that road. I built this road. I built this primary school. I built that primary school.” That exchange went viral.

Then the rain came. God really does have exquisite comic timing. Suddenly, some of those attending the conference were negotiating for water rather than asphalt. Watching the videos, I could have sworn I saw our great road builder himself being carried through the water. If that was indeed Amaechi being piggybacked across the flood, then Nigerian political satire has officially become unnecessary. Reality has hired its own writers.

Only days earlier: I built that road! Then heaven opened: Excellent. Now, where did you build the drainage? That is the question. A road is not merely asphalt. A modern urban road is an engineering system. Drainage is not a decorative accessory you install if there is money left after buying streetlights and commissioning banners. Drainage is part of the road. A road built in a high-rainfall environment without adequate stormwater provision is an unfinished road wearing makeup.

And if Amaechi intends to campaign for national office, partly on the infrastructure record he so loudly defended at the NBA conference, Nigerians are perfectly entitled to examine that record – including what happens to those roads when it rains. We certainly don’t need that model replicated nationally. Roads without drainage? Nigerians reject it in Jesus’ name. Since everybody else has brought God into the discussion, allow me one prayer, too.

Perhaps the most revealing reaction is the religious one: Rivers of joy! Rain is a blessing. Of course, rain is a blessing. Without it, crops die. Rivers shrink. Reservoirs empty. Food production suffers. Ecosystems collapse. But what exactly does any of that have to do with a flooded urban road? This habit of spiritualizing governmental incompetence is one of Nigeria’s most enduring obstacles to accountability.

No electricity? Pray. Hospital has no equipment? Pray. Has a road collapsed? Pray. Have bandits taken over communities? Pray. Rain falls, and the city disappears underwater? Praise God. Rain is a blessing. At some point, even God must be wondering why He keeps getting copied on correspondence addressed to the Ministry of Works.

God sends rain. Governments build drains. There is no contradiction between these propositions. Rain may indeed be a blessing. But floodwater entering your living room because someone stole the drainage budget is not a blessing. A car submerged because stormwater has nowhere to go is not a blessing. A business destroyed by preventable urban flooding is not a blessing.

Thousands of people wading through filthy water because drains were never constructed, were poorly constructed, were blocked, and were never maintained, or existed only in the bill of quantities is not a blessing. That is failure. And where corruption is involved, it is worse than failure. It is theft with consequences.

Stop teaching Nigerians to adapt to failure. This troubles me most about the proposals to change the NBA conference date. Without intending to, we begin teaching citizens to accommodate governmental failure rather than demand that government correct it. Are the roads terrible? Buy an SUV (Nigerians call them Jeeps). There is no electricity? Buy a generator. There is no public water? Sink a borehole. Police cannot protect you? Hire private security. Public schools have collapsed? Send your children to private schools. Hospitals don’t work? Fly abroad. Cities flood during the rainy season? Move your conference to January.

Notice the pattern? Government fails. Citizens adjust. Government fails again. Citizens adjust again. Eventually, governmental failure becomes so thoroughly normalized that demanding functioning infrastructure sounds unreasonable. That is how dysfunctional societies reproduce themselves.

The wealthy buy private substitutes. The middle class improvises. The poor suffer. And the political class escapes accountability because everyone has become highly skilled at navigating around its incompetence.

Enough.

The answer to flooded roads is not a new conference calendar. The answer is drainage. The answer to urban flooding is not banning conferences in Rivers State. The answer is competent urban planning. The answer to predictable seasonal rainfall is not shutting down society until November. The answer is infrastructure. And the answer to politicians who collect public money to provide that infrastructure but fail to deliver it is not prayer. It is accountability.

Incidentally, the 2026 NBA Annual General Conference was officially scheduled to take place in Port Harcourt from August 21–28. In other words, thousands of professionals were deliberately invited to one of Nigeria’s major cities during the rainy season – as they should be. Nigeria should work in August. Port Harcourt should work in August. Lagos should work in August. Our courts should work. Our universities should work. Our businesses should work. Our conferences should be held. Our children should attend school. Our airports should function. Our roads should remain passable. Nigeria cannot become a seasonal country simply because its corrupt leaders have failed to build an all-season society.

So, by all means, let the rain fall. Let it pour. Let Rivers State have its rivers. Let Port Harcourt remain Port Harcourt. And let the Nigerian Bar Association return there whenever it chooses – January, April, August, or October. But when it rains, the water should enter the drains, not the conference program.

And the next time Rotimi Amaechi or any Nigerian politician stands before us, chest-beating and shouting, “I built that road!” we should finally learn to ask the question Nigerian democracy has long neglected: “Wonderful, sir. Where is the drainage?”

So yes, rain is a blessing, but flooding is an indictment.

Dr. Vitus Ozoke is a lawyer, human rights activist, and public affairs analyst based in the United States. He writes on politics, governance, and the moral costs of leadership failure in Africa.