As part of efforts to proactively forestall annual flooding in Ibadan during the ongoing rainy season, especially already given signals and flooding predictions, the Ibadan Urban Flood Management Project (IUFMP) has launched dredging of 45 rivers and streams as well as desilting of blocked drains at different locations across the 11 local government areas within Ibadan metropolis.
The roll-out of the exercise according to Abiodun Adefioye IUFMP’s Communication Consultant, is in furtherance of the approval of Governor Seyi Makinde for the assignment and the earlier clearance given by the World Bank for the said project.
The dredging activity sub-project, which was packaged into four lots, was competitively bid for by over 20 duly qualified companies, resulting in the emergence of four successful bidders.
The successful companies are Transcend Construction Limited given Lot 1, Dephany Ventures Limited (Lot 2), Dutum Company Limited (Lot 3) and Lopek Engineering & Construction Limited (Lot 4) and four topnotch engineering professionals have been engaged as the supervising consultants for each of the four lots.
Adefioye explained that to flag off the assignment, a kick-off meeting has been held with the contractors and supervising engineers with members of the Project Implementation Unit (PIU) of IUFMP as well as officials of the relevant ministries in attendance while the Acting Project Coordinator of IUFMP, Engr. Olasunkanmi Sokeye explained that the approval of Governor Makinde for the task was essential to protect the lives and property of people against any losses from flooding.
He added that the imperative of executing the task in line with the specified engineering requirements and in strict compliance with environmental and social safeguards standards cannot be compromised and the dredging works, which consist of eleven sites each for Lots 1 to 3 and twelve locations for Lot 4, is to be executed within six weeks.
It would be recalled that over the years, a cumulative length of 339,412 meters of rivers and streams had been dredged spanning different locations in Ibadan and dredging of rivers/streams and desilting of blocked drains in the city have been carried out as a palliative component of the IUFMP mandate since 2016.
The continuous exercise is to complement the project’s ongoing implementation of reconstruction of damaged hydraulic infrastructure across the city and the exercise has helped to enhance the capacity of the many water channels within the city to discharge flood water, thus boosting the flooding resilience index of the metropolis.
