The Forgotten Liability: Why Nigeria’s Urban Rivers Flood and Fester—and What It Would Really Take to Fix Them

Nigeria’s urban rivers are sick. They carry sewage, industrial waste, and silt, turning seasonal rains into flash floods that destroy lives and property. From Lagos’s choked Odo-Iya Alaro to Ibadan’s notorious Ogunpa, the causes are no mystery: blocked drains, encroached floodplains, and unregulated pollution. Technology—sensors, dashboards, and reporting tools—can help. But it cannot solve a crisis that is fundamentally political. The real fix lies in rebuilding institutional capacity, confronting the interests that profit from the status quo, and treating urban rivers as public goods—not forgotten liabilities.

The crisis is maintenance, not warnings

Nigeria does not lack flood warnings. NIHSA and NiMet issue forecasts every year. The problem is what happens—or doesn’t happen—between the warning and the rain. Drains remain blocked because waste collection is erratic or non-existent. Buildings stay on floodplains because enforcement is weak or compromised. Rivers continue to receive industrial effluent because inspections are rare and penalties are negotiable.

Studies back this up. Research on Ibadan’s flooding points less to missing rainfall data and more to blocked drains and poor channel capacity as the main amplifiers of disaster. In Lagos, the Odo-Iya Alaro catchment is widely documented as a pollution hotspot. Port Harcourt’s Elechi Creek and Kaduna’s River Rido have also been studied for industrial contamination. The knowledge exists—and has for years.

The gap is not information. It is actionable accountability. A report that sits in a ministry drawer is not a solution. A warning without pre-positioned drainage teams is just noise. And a regulation that a connected factory owner can ignore is not a regulation.

The human geography: more than data points

Any solution must begin by seeing the riverbank clearly. Informal settlements along creeks are not an accident. They exist because cities have failed to provide affordable housing, and the water’s edge becomes “the only available land.” The people living there are not “encroachers” to be dispatched by an app; they are citizens navigating a brutal housing market.

Likewise, plastic in drains does not appear by magic. It comes from neighbourhoods with little or no formal waste collection. The black wastewater from a factory is a crime—but the grey water from congested, unsewered communities is a symptom of decades of underinvestment in basic infrastructure.

A tech system that treats residents only as reporters of problems—or worse, as the problem—will fail. It will generate resentment, not cooperation. And it will remain powerless against political connections that protect the worst polluters.

The practical fix: data for accountability, not a substitute for it

Technology has a role—but only as part of a larger institutional and political push. A realistic approach looks like this:

1) Measure—then define who must act

Deploy low-cost river-level sensors and rainfall gauges at known hotspots. Stream the data to a public dashboard. But the real question is: who is obligated to respond when levels cross danger thresholds?

• Infrastructure: simple, rugged telemetry—not speculative “AI magic.”
• Accountability: a legally mandated response protocol. If the Ogunpa sensor hits red, the responsible drainage officer must file a timestamped action report within two hours. If no report is filed, escalation triggers to SEMA—and the failure is published online. The goal isn’t a “cool dashboard”; it’s an enforceable chain of responsibility.

2) Unblock the system before the drains

Blocked drains are a maintenance failure—and maintenance fails because the system for doing it is broken.

• Infrastructure: a public GIS asset register for major drains/culverts (ID, condition score, last-cleaned date). A WhatsApp line for residents to report blockages, auto-linked to each drain ID.
• Accountability: when a drain is reported blocked, the clock starts. If it isn’t cleared within a set window, both the report and the inaction remain visible to everyone—public, press, and community groups. This must be paired with real investment in waste collection, so residents have somewhere to put rubbish besides the drain.

3) Make pollution visible—and polluters nameable

Industrial pollution is not a data problem; it’s an enforcement problem. Factories know when they pollute. Regulators often know too. The missing piece is political will.

• Infrastructure: digital discharge permits, unannounced e-inspections with tamper-resistant, geotagged evidence, and public water-quality databases for key outfalls (e.g., Elechi Creek).
• Accountability: when an outfall shows illegal toxin levels, the result should auto-forward to the environmental agency and the state attorney general. If enforcement doesn’t follow within a tracked timeframe, the inaction becomes visible—and politically costly. The goal is to weaponize transparency against regulatory capture.

4) Don’t “flag” settlements from space and call it policy

Satellite imagery can detect new construction on floodplains. But a red pin cannot be an eviction trigger.

• Infrastructure: satellite change detection combined with land-use maps.
• Accountability: a red flag triggers a human-centred response: assessment by planning and housing—not just demolition. Is this desperate need? Is resettlement possible? Can risk be mitigated? Data points must lead to human decisions, not bulldozers.

5) Publish everything—and expect a fight

Publish sensor readings, drain-clearing schedules, water-quality results, and contract milestones. Open data creates a shared reality that makes denial harder. But publishing is not winning. Expect pushback from those who profit from opacity. Often, the fight begins when the data goes public.

A 90-day pilot that tests governance, not gadgets

Pick one corridor—Ogunpa (Ibadan), Odo-Iya Alaro (Lagos), or Elechi Creek (Port Harcourt). Install a small sensor network. Launch the public drain register. Open the WhatsApp reporting line. But make the pilot’s goal explicit: not “solve flooding,” but answer hard questions:

• Can we keep the sensors working?
• Will the responsible agency respond to a public alert?
• What happens when we publish the name of a polluter?
• Can we design alerts that don’t criminalise riverside communities?

If the pilot fails, it likely won’t be because sensors broke. It will be because the surrounding system was never ready. That knowledge is valuable.

Nigeria’s urban rivers will not be saved by a dashboard. They will be saved when data creates unbearable public pressure for someone to act. If you work in government, push for transparency that binds your own office—publish schedules, readings, and response times. If you’re in tech, build tools citizens can use to document, journalists can analyse, and communities can organise around. And if you’re a resident, treat the blocked drain and polluted creek as political realities: document them, name them, and demand what you are owed. The rain is not the enemy. Inaction is.